History of Shadow Education in Korea
Since the 1950s, private tutoring for college admission exams has spread widely in Korea, raising social controversies and tension within society that the government has consistently implemented policies to reduce (Ko 2013) However, in spite of these policies, the place of hakwons in Korean education has increased sharply in numerous aspects, for example, the number of hakwons, the expenditure on hakwons, the number of enrolled students, and the number of teachers. According to Lee et al. (2010) participation rates in hakwons have increased rapidly, totaling 6.23% in 1979, 14.9% in 1980, 59.4% in 1997 and 75.1% in 2008.