HEPA was first exercised on July 21, 2015. The law obliges every schools and autonomous bodies to provide appropriate personality education to their members. The government has established Humanistic Education Promotion Committee (HEPC) in order to promote the law and make personality education plans every 5 years. According to HEPA, every elementary, middle, and high schools in Korea ought to provide humanistic education for their employees. Also, they are required to open classes for personality education.

 

The law at first seemed to be paving the way for promoting personality education to teenagers in Korea. Nevertheless, it turns out to have been a fifth wheel due to vague guidelines and unchanging educational environment. For example, a high school located in Seoul had made the “personality education division”, which simply was a student guidance division’s version with a new name.

 

Another example is a middle school in Gwanak-gu, Seoul. What the school does for its students’ personality education is, inviting renowned lecturer or reading quotes from Talmud. Apparently, the humanistic education is perceived as mere cramming method, temporary event, or even a means to build up career. The greatest problem of deficient personality education is that the majority of people deem it as cramming up ethical manners.

 

Despite the enacted law to promote personality education for teenagers, the Education Ministry (EM) is not paying much attention to the vitality of the law’s practical enforcement. With an insufficient preparation of its practice, it was out of the question that the HEPA demonstrate its effectiveness. According to the law, the EM was supposed to establish comprehensive plans for personality education by November, 2015. The committee for it, in fact, was organized in January, 2016. Delayed actions of the EM are suspected to be the direct cause of the law’s weak performance.

 

Since the complex plans were announced late, all the enforcement plans of affiliated organizations and schools have been postponed as well. In addition, the lack of time to properly exercise the law caused confusion among schools and organizations regarding the direction of personality education. The superintendents with conservative inclination focus on ethical education while superintendents with progressive inclination are emphasizing student rights, employee rights, and citizenship. Confusion regarding the concept of personality education among educators lacked time to be resolved.

 

Setting the above mentioned problems aside, the fundamental problem of personality education in Korea is its existing environment. Teenagers of Korea spend majority of their adolescence competing with each other, with the heavy pressure of their parents. They are coerced to study regardless of their free will, and to aim for renowned university. Being forced to cram massive intellectual knowledge in their heads, teenagers are obviously not given with sufficient time to develop decent personality.

 

Not only thorough organizing of educational programs is needed, but educational background of overheated competition needs transition. Since personality is not what people study through cramming related information, educators should devise methods to help the students cultivate decent characters. It might be a piece of cake to make students seem to have good characteristic, but to help them grow with desirable personality is nothing to overlook.