South Korea's SKY Problem

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]South Korea made a TV show about parents destroying their kids through academic obsession and it became the most popular show in the country's history. Sky Castle, the show, started with 1.7% of TV owning households watching.

[00:00:17][music] It's finale hit 23.78% setting the record for highest viewership of any program in Korean history. Parents recognized what they were seeing. They discussed it over dinner and posted about it online. Then they drove their kids to cram schools the next morning. If the show had changed anything, you'd see it in the spending data. You do not. Private education spending in South Korea surged over 60% in the past decade reaching 29.2 trillion won, roughly 20 billion dollars in 2024. Between 2020 and 2023, per student spending jumped 43.7%. [music] In fact, Korea is now the most expensive country in the world to raise a child.

[00:01:03]Families with teenagers in the top income quintile spend 18% of their monthly income on tutoring alone.

[00:01:11]Private education now accounts for 12% of household spending in Korea, more than what families spend on food. The system absorbed the critique and metabolized it into content. After Sky Castle came The Penthouse, Crash Course in Romance, and Green Mothers Club. Each one depicting the same machinery. Each one becoming a hit. Each one changing nothing.