The big complaint here actually seems to be kids acting like kids. I can see the issue in a country where the idea of leisure time, technology, and similar things are new. A culture used to the ideal of back breaking labour as soon as one is physically capable of it, doubtlessly finds something decadent in kids spending a lot of time playing video games, despite that this is what they arguably worked for in improving their standard of living. What's more while someone who had never had access to an educational system values that kind of thing highly, once educational systems become standardized and taken for granted, those who come up with them see the situation a lot differantly. This is especially true when it comes to skills that even kids realize they are likely to never use, and/or competitive systems where the people who are going to go somewhere are identified rather quickly and everyone else is just degrees of average. The recognized inabillity to succeed or achieve anything of note is what creates the entire "slacker" mindset. A lot of societies very much want to put kids through a bunch of loops so they can make the pretensions that they can go somewhere and things haven't already been decided, for their own conscience more than the kids. People do catch on to this, and realizing there is nothing to motivate them and refuse to jump through hoops. The ironic thing is that for all comments about getting kids to stop playing video games and put more effort into schoolwork (in all countries), it probably really doesn't matter beyond the age of like 12 or 13 other than basic skills due to the elite and geniuses having been selected. While it makes a conveinent scapegoat to avoid addressing societal problems (video games are the current boogieman, something is always used for this) like this, the amount of time spent blowing off schoolwork for games or whatever isn't going to make a differance for the average person who will never use 99% of what they learn, and isn't going to have any more options simply because nobody stamped "Genius" on their record. Yes I'm a cynic.
At any rate, South Korea is what I see as being a "Neo Barbarian" country even if some people resent that term. The term meaning a backwards culture, trying to progress, and frequently in possession of technology in excess of the societal development to deal with it. While insulting to some,I think it's a label that needs to be used more often, especially as it can help in recognizing issues and understanding what your seeing. Just a few decades ago Korea was (during war time) a nation where little boys were sent to work as soon as they could, and little girls were as often as not prostituted by their parents as soon as they could physically handle it. There are plenty of shocking stories about the culture from back when we were fighting a war down there, and most of it was pretty much par for the course in second and third world countries. Korea was one of the many nations that inspired video "shockographies" like the "Shocking Asia" series and so on, because it was both a culture shock and also relatively safe to visit for a long time. It's not surprisng that with such rapid progress technologically and socially, that your seeing a whole "correct the behavior with torture" attitude here... and that's what it pretty much is, the pictures go well beyond what you'd see in an American or European "military school" (or any that I am aware of) or even "boot camp" type detoxication and deprogramming (for people rescued from cults) programs. Not to mention that it's all over a non-issue, that pretty much exists due to the culture becoming culture-shocked with itself over a generation due to rapid progress.
