Youth Culture in Korea

The pressure to do well on this standardized test is so great, many students get burned out. It is not uncommon for a handful of students in each classroom to sleep. Most teachers will allow it. They see it as the student's choice to fail. Some students even carry a pillow from class to class.

Dating in Korea depends on individual people, but the average Korean starts dating around high school age. Due to the fact that many schools are separated by gender, some Korean youths might not kiss someone of the opposite sex until they reach college age or beyond.

On dates, it's not uncommon for youngsters to go to movies, game rooms (오락실), singing rooms (노래방), PC rooms (PC방), or video rooms (비디오방). However, video rooms tend to have a nasty reputation for being places where Koreans make out or have varying degrees of sex while viewing a movie in a semiprivate room. On a lighter note, if all goes well for a young couple, they will buy couple rings. Obviously, this displays to others that they are a couple. When the time comes, the boy will finally enter the girl's house to meet her parents. Usually Korean kids don't enter their boyfriend or girlfriend's house until they intend to get married. When parent's approval is given, an inexpensive engagement ring is bought and they hold an engagement party. In Korea the wedding ring is the expensive ring, in contrast to the customary expensive engagement ring and inexpensive wedding band of the West.

Video Games

Whether in a living room or a smoky PC room, here's what the Korean kids are playing.

By far one of the most popular video games ever to hit Korea was StarCraft and the popular add-on, Broodwar, both by Blizzard entertainment. Until recently (2000), 80% of Blizzard's Battle.net multiplayer hub was being used by South Korean StarCraft players. The game debuted in Korea in early 1998, and its popularity was so fierce it led to the rise of the PC room (PC 방), where 20 or more computers are connected by LAN and to the outside world by a T1. These PC rooms can be found in every corner of the country, wherever kids can be found. And at a price of about $1.00 (U.S.) per hour, they can afford it. When kids finish school in the evening or afternoon, they make their way to PC rooms to chat and play multiplayer video games. Nowadays, StarCraft is still popular, but Korean-made role-playing computer game "Lineage" is taking over.

Another wildly popular Asian game, this time an arcade game, is "Pump". Pump is competitor of "DDR", a game where the player stands on a dance platform with pressure-sensitive arrows and mimics dance movements indicated with similar arrows seen on the screen. As players improve their moves, it looks more like a dance than someone stomping around, and the pros use their hands and work in pairs, creating quite a display of coordination.

Music

From pop to punk to hip hop to opera, Korea has it all.

Korean teens like music as much as any other. Weekly TV programs like Music Bank, Music Camp, and Pop Songs (인기 가요) show off the hottest music stars, some of which will only be popular for a month. At the time of this writing, 조성모, H.O.T., Baby V.O.X., and FIN.K.L. are popular musicians and groups with staying power. Male pop star 서태지 recently returned from the U.S. after 4 years on hiatus. His return caused an absolute mob at Kimpo international airport. H.O.T.'s crowds of screaming, crying teenage girls is reminiscent of the Beatles.

Korean pop music is varied in its genre. In Korea, you can listen to native ska, punk, techno, ballad, metal, industrial and rock. American pop music, as always, has numerous fans.

Music isn't limited to typical media. The popularity of digital PCS phones (cell phones, or hand phones as they are called in Korea) has led to the ability to download your favorite song into your phone and have it ring with that tune. This is useful since almost everyone over the age of 14 has a cell phone, and phones with similar rings are confusing, especially on the subway. 

source : zKorean