If Japan accepts TPP, Japan will be in the same
situation.
Although Obama tries to avoid a war, he
will forcibly press Japan to accept TPP.
I wonder if the LDP led by Abe, whose Achilles heel on fraud election U.S.
has discovered, can resist such pressure.
Masatoshi
Takeshita
January
10, 2013
English translation of an editorial of Chosun IIbon Newspaper (Japanized version): January 8, 2013 –
[Editorial]
Get Meaning of “One million Students Who Take a Leave of Absence from College”
Reportedly, 933,000
Korean college students, which account for 31 percent of 2.988 million Korean college
students, are on a leave of absence. In case when all institutions of higher
education such as graduate schools and open universities are included, the
number of such students reaches 1,104,000.
There is a case that 47 percent of college students enrolled is on a
leave of absence and another case that 83 percent of students are on a leave of
absence in a department.
The ratio of college students
on a leave of absence exceeded 30 percent after the Asian currency crisis and
has never decreased thereafter; we have never seen the
number below 900,000. Now the concept of a college has been changed: it is a place
where students are supposed to attend for five or six years.
Less than 60 percent of
university graduates find employment and “secure employment” provided by
corporations is long in increasing. For this reason, it has become indispensable
in college life to take a leave of absence and acquire “ability and experience
advantageous to college students to find employment” such as good scores of TOEFL
(Test of English Proficiency as a Foreign Language) and TOEIC (Test of English for
International communication), various qualifications, award-winning
achievements, internship experience, and overseas language training. As corporations increasingly demand
applicants to have such ability or experience, college
students have developed the belief that good performance in college alone is no
warranty of employment.
Sixty-eight percent of
college students start out in life on a debt of 13 million won on average
(approximately 990,000 yen) due to loaned scholarship fund. One out of four students has to take one-semester
off every other year or every two years and make money to pay for expensive
tuition fees and living costs. Many students have a sense of crisis that if
they cannot find jobs immediately after graduation and have moratorium, it is
more difficult to get a chance to find employment, and try to postpone
graduation. They are called “group of
graduation moratorium.” Such students on
a leave of absence are virtually jobless workers, but are not reflected in the
statistics on young unemployed workers.
Korean young people start
economic activities at the age of 25 on average and college graduates at the
age of 27. Compared with the average age of 22.9 for Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
member nations, Koreans start activities two to four years later. With an increase of students on a leave of
absence, young people are all the more later in starting out in life. Late employment
results in late marriage, which will more seriously affect a decrease in the
number of children. Some
statistics show that half of students on a leave depend
on their parents for a living. The generation of their parents who are anxious about their
old age is going to burden a new burden.
There were 168,000 college students in the
1970s and now are 3 million students.
After founding of a college was liberalized in 1996, the number of
college students rapidly increased by more than 1 million. At that time, 1 million college students, who
are equal to current students on a leave of absence in number, were born anew. Korean government’s college policy without
foresight imposed a heavy debt on the society.
We have to thoroughly review the policy.
Corporations demand the ability, experience and graduation time of
students. It is hard to say that it is a
wise policy for employment. An abnormal situation in
which one out of three college students are on a leave of absence has driven
Korea itself into abnormality. The
meaning of “one million students on a leave of absence from college” is never
simple.
Chuson IIbon Newspaper/Japanized version
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