OECD (Organisation For Economic Co-operation and Development) report shows lower secondary education class-size averages of 35.8 students where OECD reports the average at 24.

Korea also spent excessively on education in the private sector compared to other countries, the report said.

The OECD, the Paris-based grouping of wealthy countries, released these and other findings entitled "Education at a Glance." The organization gathered and analyzed the academic statistics of 30 member and 19 nonmember countries between 2001 and 2003.

The average number of students per classroom in Korea was 35.7 for elementary schools, the largest of all surveyed OECD countries. In junior high, it was 37.1, far larger than the OECD average of 23.7.

The school ladder system, the backbone of the school education system, unified structure connecting the different school levels.

Korea has a singletrack 6-3-3-4 system which maintains a single line of school levels in order to insure that every citizen can receive elementary, secondary, and tertiary education without discrimination and according to his or her ability.

Be prepared when you enter the classroom. Remember always that you are a teacher first and that students respond best out of respect. Plan well, control your classes, motivate your students and many of the challenges will take care of themselves.

ANSAN, South Korea -- "Next!" barked Joanne Richardson, a bureaucratic-looking Canadian sitting behind a desk in a bustling hall marked "Immigrations." She beckoned to a timid looking 15-year old girl wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt.

"Good morning, what is your name?" Richardson, 27, asked using clear, enunciated English.

In the English Village in Ansan, students use English in order to receive dollar-like coupons to use for goods and services at the "village bank."

UIJEONGBU PRISON, Gyeonggi Province - It looks like a typical scene at thousands of hagwons in Korea; students sit around a foreign teacher, trying hard to express themselves in English, with laughter interrupting the flow of conversation every few minutes.

If not for the monotonous blue uniforms which all the students are wearing and an iron-barred window, it's easy to forget this classroom is set back from the rest of the world, behind layers of locked steel doors and towers and checkpoints manned by prison guards. 

First let me start by saying when I first started teaching abroad, I was not a teacher.

I was not motivated to move across the ocean to inspire kids.  I wanted to be a teacher because it was the only opportunity for me to explore the world on a shoestring.  I had no money and a whole lot of debt... how else was I going to get anywhere?

Now that you know my altruistic intentions, you are probably guessing that my classroom was a joke. 

50/50 - The percentage of wonderfully respectful and well-behaved students to those that are completely the opposite is about 50-50.

One thing that I was surprised to encounter is that in a traditional Confucianism society/culture, I expected that more students would respect people of authority and those of elder status. However, this seems to apply more to Koreans than to foreigners. About half of the students are quite rude and unruly towards foreign teachers.

This is a perspective of an ESL Teacher who is in a small, relatively new institute and is the only native speaker there:

We have three Korean teachers and myself. Often I feel that my role there is more about providing the students with the opportunity to have contact with a native speaker. That being said this is my take on the education system in Korea as I have come to understand it.

Cooper Darby was a Chartered Accountant before he became inspired to teach in a public school in Korea and the only teaching experience he had was educating his clients on tax laws and the proper way to fill out their tax forms.  After working as an accountant for 3 years he decided it was time to give life abroad a go.  Money was a motivating concern as he had student loans and looming credit card debts so he chose to teach in South Korea, a place where housing and airfare were covered and where he was going to earn enough to send money home and still live well.  Here is his story:

Public education in Korea has long been criticized for reducing the intellectual level of students by overemphasizing equality at the expense of individual differences in scholastic aptitude during the past three decades.

That accusation is not misplaced, given that almost all students are given cookie-cutter education at school. They use the same textbooks, work the same hours and learn from the instructors using the same teaching methods. This uniform public education has contributed to promoting expensive private tutoring in the nation.