0816-Protectionism bigger risk than N.K.: foreign firm executives

Foreign companies in South Korea see protectionism and labor issues as greater risks than North Korean threats in doing business here, a survey showed on Tuesday.

Analysts said the poll results indicated that foreign firms, like most of the Korean public, now considered North Korea’s repeated threats as a fact of life in South Korea.

The survey was conducted by The Korea Herald from July 1 to Aug. 11 to mark the paper‘s 60th anniversary. A total of 103 CEOs and executives at multinational companies responded to the poll by email.

Asked about the biggest risk to business operations in the Korean market, the largest group of respondents, 36 percent, pointed to protectionist sentiment.

Labor issues (19 percent), the language barrier (18 percent) and an unstable political environment (13 percent) also ranked high among risk factors, the survey found. Only 8 percent of respondents picked North Korean threats as their biggest concern.

On the business impact from North Korean threats alone, 45 percent agreed that the risks attached to the North affected business operations significantly, while 36 percent dismissed there being any impact.

Almost half of the foreign firms’ executives, or 45 percent, cited growth potential as the most attractive aspect of the Korean market, while 22 percent favored the dynamic culture and people here.

Governmental support and human capital gained less support from the respondents.

They agreed that the shrinking population was becoming increasingly problematic for the Korean economy and that the technology gap between Korea and other emerging markets in Asia, such as China and India, had narrowed on many fronts.

But 67 percent of people disagreed that Korea’s growth potential was on the wane, with 60 percent saying Korea would need to find new niche markets.

The survey found that 63 percent were familiar with the Park Geun-hye government’s “creative economy” and “economic democratization” policies.

Fifty-eight percent said vitalizing small and medium-sized companies should be the main point of the policies, while 8 percent said the purpose should be keeping big companies in check.

About 81 percent of foreign firm executives expressed support for President Park‘s economic democratization policy while 9 percent were negative toward the policy.

The foreign companies also felt positive toward Korea’s free trade agreements with the United States and the European Union. About 76 percent agreed that Korea‘s FTAs with the two major economies had been very helpful for business.

Men made up 83 percent of the respondents to the survey. The proportion of women, at 17 percent, was relatively high considering the average for women executives at Korea-based companies is estimated at less than 2 percent.

Seventy percent of the executives were in their 30s or 40s. More than half the participants, or 55 percent, had been in Korea for more than three years.

A majority, 66 percent, came from the Asia-Pacific region, followed by Europeans at 21 percent and North Americans at 11 percent.

For simpler calculation and easier comprehension, the final figures were rounded off.

0814-Naver jumps into tricky mobile content market

Naver Corp., South Korea’s top Internet portal, is set to launch a new mobile platform that will allow users to share and monetize content they have created.

The new platform, temporarily named “Naver Post” by developers, began a closed beta testing of the service with early testers last month.

Naver Post aims to provide a variety of content made by users including Naver bloggers. The mobile content platform market is facing greater competition with the launch of Naver’s new service. Its contenders have already jumped into the market: Kakao Page by Kakao was launched in April and Story Ball started its service on Aug. 8.

Naver Post, slated for launch within this year, is also to provide content free of charge, at least in the initial stage. The platform is expected to differ from other existing services. Details about pricing and other options remain unknown.

“As we have seen in content sales cases on the Internet, it is difficult for us to make users pay for them,” a Naver official told Money Today newspaper on Tuesday. The official said the company was mulling other ways to generate profits such as banner ads.

Some speculate that Naver’s free content policy is to avoid the travails of Kakao Page.

For all the new features, however, it seems a tough battle even for cash-rich Naver given that its competitors are struggling.

Kakao Page, one of the pioneers in mobile content platforms, attempted to nurture the paid content market on its proprietary mobile platform, only to see disappointing results. It signed on big names such as a leading comic artist Huh Young-man, but sales figures did not add up to what Kakao previously projected.

Kakao Page, at one point, included a product with a daily total sales amount of 10,000 won ($9) in the top 10 content.

July 16 data by online ranking site Rankey.com showed that only 1 percent of smartphone users regularly access Kakao Page, and the number of its users fell from 570,000 in May to 330,000 in June.

Compared to the usage ratio of other Kakao products such as mobile messenger Kakao Talk and Kakao games among smartphone owners -- 97 percent and 68 percent, respectively -- the popularity of Kakao Page is far from impressive.

Last month, Kakao changed its policy to include free content on its paid mobile platform while lowering the minimum price of its products to 100 won from 500 won.

0813-The Korean Word for ‘Foreign Car’: BMW

South Korean car buyers are increasingly turning to diesel models with foreign nameplates.
According to the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association, imported-vehicle sales hit a record 14,953 in July, up 17% from June and 39% from a year earlier. Foreign cars represented 12.9% of the market, up from 9.6% a year earlier.
In the first seven months of the year, Koreans bought 89,440 foreign cars, up from 73,007 in the first seven months of 2012.
A trade agreement with the European Union may have helped boost imported-car sales by cutting prices through tariff reductions. Under the agreement, tariffs were cut as of July 1—to 1.6% from 3.2% for large and midsize cars and to 4% from 5.3% for small cars.
And when they buy a foreign car, Koreans like it to be German—and most particularly, to be a BMW. It topped the list in July once again, selling 3,023 vehicles. Compatriots held the next three positions: Volkswagen AG (2,696), Mercedes-Benz (2,567) and VW unit Audi (1,776).
To find a non-German maker required going down the list to fifth place—and a distant fifth at that: Toyota Motor Corp., with 737 vehicles sold.
Among individual models, four of the top five were diesel cars: the BMW 520D, last year’s No. 1, with 848 sold; the VW Golf 2.0 TDI (688); the VW Tiguan 2.0 TDI BlueMotion (543); and the Mercedes-Benz E220 CDI (530).
It testifies to Korean car buyers’ interest in fuel efficiency at a time of fluctuating fuel prices, as diesel powered cars boast about 30% better fuel efficiency than gasoline engines of similar size. More than 60% of the imported cars sold last month were diesels. Regular gasoline-powered cars accounted for nearly all the rest, although hybrids did have a 3.1% share.
More than 52% of 527 people surveyed recently by SK Encar, a used-car website, said they would buy a diesel-powered vehicle, compared with 27.1% who favored gasoline and 13.3% wanted a hybrid.

Looking to catch a trend, Hyundai Motors said that Tuesday it would unveil the new Avante with diesel engines.

0812-Stay young, stay fun

‘Kidults’ return to chilhood pursuits to escape stress of adult life
By Jeong Hunny and Lee Ji-yoon

Lee Sung-ha builds Lego for hours after work. The tiny plastic bricks are not just a pastime for the 32-year-old copywriter. His mind flies back to the time when life was simple, joyful and free from stress.

“That is the only moment when I can fully relax from all the stress factors like work and marriage concerns,” Lee says.

Lee, unmarried, spends some 500,000 won ($448) on Lego and other toys every month and the investment always pays off. The collections help him relive the pure childhood pleasure he lost while growing up.

He may be one of the “kidults,” or adults with kids’ hobbies, who have emerged since the mid-2000s as a distinct sociocultural phenomenon and an important marketing target for consumer and entertainment businesses.

Lego, die-cast car models, and miniature World War II Tiger tanks are among their favorites.

“It was love at first sight,” Kim Sung-wan, 39, recalls of his first experience with Lego at his friend’s home when he was a child.

“It was fascinating to build so many things with these small blocks and be able to take them apart to build even more things.”

That‘s still the case for Kim, who currently heads an on and offline Lego community, Bricksworld.

Cultivating juvenile tastes, those people are often considered just growns-up in body but kids in mind. But most of them have busy lives with adult responsibilities, respectable jobs and sometimes children of their own.

Kidult entrepreneur Hwang Jae-ho disagree with the terminology.

“Why call us half kid and half adult? We’re normal people just trying to enjoy our hobbies, as much as anyone else,” he says.

“And how is spending $1,000 on golf irons respectable while spending the same amount of money on plastic World War II battleships isn‘t?”

Kidult consumers are not simply adults who purchase kid products, says Jay Shim, vice president and chief marketing officer of Walt Disney Company Korea.

“We no longer limit animation or character content as children’s exclusive property. In the case of collectible figures, their degree of perfection is comparable to that of collection items and art pieces.”

Men and women now tired of living up to the demands of the modern corporate world -- keep working, don’t sleep, and don‘t whine about it -- are turning to kidult products to remind them that life should have its share of fun.

“I think many people in their 30s and 40s are returning to childhood hobbies they had abandoned for financial and personal reasons. People in that age bracket now have the social independence to pursue those kinds of hobbies. Nostalgia also plays a big role,” says Kim.

The increasing search for a unique identity and consequent encouragement given to formerly quiet individuals to open up their interests also explains the growth of kidult culture, according to Han Sang-ki, founder of the think tank Institute of Social Computing.

The up tick in the number of social gatherings that focus on Lego, Gundam models, radio-controlled toys, miniature figurines, and Disney characters can be attributed to this trend.

To some, this is an art.

“To be good at it, you must divest hours, weeks and months of your time, money and effort,” says Min Kyung-chan, a 38-year-old plastic model hobbyist.

Some plastic model buyers do historical research to perfect the finishing touches on their replicas. After buying a World War II German Panzer tank plastic model, one buyer researched the designs and layout of the 1940s armored vehicle so that he could paint the tank with the precise colors.

These enthusiasts are a new class of experts, says Park Kyu-sang, a professor of sociology at Gachon University.

“They are the pioneers in these fields. By extensively researching, buying and otherwise stimulating related industries they are generating externalities that create jobs, better market information, and higher-quality products.”

The coming of Hollywood blockbusters about formerly obscure and “nerdy” comic-book heroes such as Ironman, Batman and Superman helped to push kidult culture into the spotlight in Korea, says Hwang. Korean hobbyists benefited because topics that were obscure and even shunned came to be considered “cool” and attractive.

“I think this growth represents a deeper understanding people here in Korea have in terms of diversity, mutual respect and tolerance towards difference,” Min says. “People are becoming more open and accepting.”

Everyone has a fundamental incentive to show off and look for people who have similar interests, adds Hwang.

“Just look at Facebook. Random people talk about, really, nothing. But still, people like showing friends what they did today, what they are thinking about at the moment, what they ate for lunch, and other trivial things.

“Kidults are no different. They have interests that they want to share with friends, no matter how seemingly frivolous.”

0808-Saneum Natural Recreational Forest promotes healing through ‘forest herapy’

YANGPYEONG, Gyeonggi Province -- Habitually bombarded by stress, feeling pressure from work or school, being trapped in a sea of traffic and constantly being blitzed by the chaotic noise of the city are simply some of the unavoidable daily obstacles that the average urbanite experiences in any large metropolitan area.

However, with two-thirds of Korea made up of forests, it seems only natural for locals to want to break away from city life and revert back to the laws of nature, seeking out a new life by tasting the peaceful serenity of the great outdoors.

Korea has 37 state-run national recreational forests scattered across the nation. Many of them are designated by the government to create recreational facilities where citizens can fully appreciate all that the woods have to offer. The forests offer citizens easy and enjoyable access to the country’s vast natural resources with cheaper entrance fees than other private or local government-owned recreational forests.

Located at the foot of Bongmisan Mountain are the lush, green forests of Saneum Natural Recreational Forest in Yangpyeong-gun, Gyeonggi Province. A haven of natural skyscrapers of pine, oak and maple, the national park was created as a home away from home for those looking for a quiet place to relax, reflect and repair.

Aside from the facility’s abundance of scenic mountain hiking trails, log cabins and fixed campgrounds, the Saneum Natural Recreational Forest is also the country’s first facility that focuses on the concept of healing and relaxation by offering guests complimentary forest therapy sessions.

“Forest therapy is all about cleansing and purifying the mind and the spirit and becoming one with nature,” said the park’s forest therapist Nah Byung-choon. “The flow of energy changes when you are out in the forest compared to when you are just meditating inside. Negative energy begins to release itself almost instantaneously the moment you step out into the clean air of nature.”

As one of the nearest recreational forests to Seoul, the park has been developed as an area offering urban citizens a chance escape their worries and take part in the activities of the facility’s healing center, which includes meditation and forest yoga, exercising, dancing and even poetry reading.

“Now is gold. Now is the best gift. Now is a miracle, the most beautiful flower seed,” wrote Nah, who is also a published poet and offers special outdoor poetry reading sessions for those who wish to share and express themselves through words as they bask in the wonders of nature and rid their minds of stress.

While forest therapy may sound like a New Agey, tree-hugging fad, it may nevertheless lead one to clinically feel happier and healthier. Many studies have linked forest therapy with having a number of health benefits including reducing stress levels, lowering blood pressure and increasing concentration abilities by helping people ease tension as they reach meditative state.

“Meditation is very simple. Simplicity is the best path for achieving equilibrium and stability in one’s life,” said Nah, who has been a forest guide and therapist since 2001. “It is all about balance. Ying and yang. Just like how the tides of the ocean flow out, so too must they flow back in.”

Nah’s forest therapy sessions typically involve students freeing their minds as they participate in various stretching routines and exercises after a long walk along the facility’s mountain trails. Students are asked to remove their socks and shoes and to wander around the woods barefoot as they participate in classes so that one can truly appreciate the forest with all five senses.

“This is what it means to be one with nature,” he said. “It’s not enough to just be among the trees. We must also see, hear, smell, touch and feel our surroundings in order to understand its essence.”

“I feel like I’m flying in the air,” said Han Jeong-suk, a participant in one of Nah’s therapy classes. “I came here with my coworkers and we are all relieving ourselves of our daily stress and improving our moods through powerful relaxation that is given to us by nature.”

Whether it be to get in touch with nature through deep meditation or simply needing a break from the bedlam of living in an urban jungle, taking advantage the nation’s surplus of green areas is an ideal way to find tranquility and solitude. Freedom can be as simple as losing oneself in the wilderness.

“When you think about it, leaves represent the root of our lives,” Nah said. “I really think nature is the best religion offered in this world. We can find all the answers to all of life’s questions right outside our door.”

0807-Google office suite ups ante against MS

Google appeared set for further improvements to make up for the shortfalls of its online office applications to challenge Microsoft in providing a more flexible working environment in the fast-changing business era.

Participating at the Google Apps Conference 2013 in Seoul on Friday, Google Enterprise manager Kim Seon-il said, “Google will create an office environment in which people can work anytime and anywhere.”

Google provides around 70 Web-based applications including Google Drive, Google Docs and Google Sites, available for a yearly fee of $50 per account.

It has more than 5 million business customers worldwide including The New York Times and POSCO, the largest steel maker in Korea.

“Now many individuals bring their own digital devices to their office since companies hardly provide state-of-the-art gadgets for work,” said Kim, emphasizing the importance of converging and recreating knowledge and promoting teamwork at a time when workers trot around the world for business.

High ranking officials of firms currently using Google Apps said they were highly satisfied with the services.

“After a year of Bukwang Parma using the office apps, ‘sharing innovation,’ a keyword much talked about in the business field, seems to fit Google’s online services,” said Kwon Soon-il, a director of Bukwang Pharm, a pharmaceutical firm.

“A top-down and military-like company culture, prevalent in the drug business sector, has somehow changed to one that is more horizontal or democratic with increased communication and cooperation among workers,” Kwon said.

In fact, an official at a client firm for Google said Google’s web-based office suite will likely pose “an immense challenge” against Microsoft Office, which dominates 80 percent of the desktop office application market in Korea.

In April, consultancy Gartner, noting Google’s aggressive expansion in the cloud office market, had already predicted that Microsoft Office‘s reign as the dominant productivity suite is under threat from Google Apps.

Around 30 resellers are in operation for the Google apps, giving educational lectures, and usage tips for Korean customers.

The Google apps, however, is not without shortcomings.

Some participants at the event pointed out that there were difficulties in converting widely-used Microsoft documents to Google-based ones and that users should always be online to use the applications.

In addition, Google does not run a customer service center or have a direct contact channel to the internet giant in Korea in regard to Google Apps services.

“Google may have to nurture more third-party firms to do the conversion works or make its services more compatible with the Microsoft software,” said David Shin, managing director of Sonova, a Zurich-based hearing aid maker.

Regarding security issues which make potential business customers hesitate to sign up for the Google services, Kim Ji-young, an official at the human resources department of Google, said “since Google tracks all access of users to the office apps, it is easier to manage information security for businesses than other measures such as USB flash drives or paper documents.”(wone0102@heraldcorp.com)

0806-The $4 Million Teacher

By 
• AMANDA RIPLEY

Kim Ki-hoon earns $4 million a year in South Korea, where he is known as a rock-star teacher—a combination of words not typically heard in the rest of the world. Mr. Kim has been teaching for over 20 years, all of them in the country's private, after-school tutoring academies, known as hagwons. Unlike most teachers across the globe, he is paid according to the demand for his skills—and he is in high demand.

SeongJoon Cho for The Wall Street Journal

Kim Ki-Hoon, who teaches in a private after-school academy, earns most of his money from students who watch his lectures online. 'The harder I work, the more I make,' he says. 'I like that.'

Mr. Kim works about 60 hours a week teaching English, although he spends only three of those hours giving lectures. His classes are recorded on video, and the Internet has turned them into commodities, available for purchase online at the rate of $4 an hour. He spends most of his week responding to students' online requests for help, developing lesson plans and writing accompanying textbooks and workbooks (some 200 to date).

"The harder I work, the more I make," he says matter of factly. "I like that."

I traveled to South Korea to see what a free market for teaching talent looks like—one stop in a global tour to discover what the U.S. can learn from the world's other education superpowers. Thanks in part to such tutoring services, South Korea has dramatically improved its education system over the past several decades and now routinely outperforms the U.S. Sixty years ago, most South Koreans were illiterate; today, South Korean 15-year-olds rank No. 2 in the world in reading, behind Shanghai. The country now has a 93% high-school graduation rate, compared with 77% in the U.S.

Tutoring services are growing all over the globe, from Ireland to Hong Kong and even in suburban strip malls in California and New Jersey. Sometimes called shadow education systems, they mirror the mainstream system, offering after-hours classes in every subject—for a fee. But nowhere have they achieved the market penetration and sophistication of hagwons in South Korea, where private tutors now outnumber schoolteachers.

Viewed up close, this shadow system is both exciting and troubling. It promotes striving and innovation among students and teachers alike, and it has helped South Korea become an academic superpower. But it also creates a bidding war for education, delivering the best services to the richest families, to say nothing of its psychological toll on students. Under this system, students essentially go to school twice—once during the day and then again at night at the tutoring academies. It is a relentless grind.

The bulk of Mr. Kim's earnings come from the 150,000 kids who watch his lectures online each year. (Most are high-school students looking to boost their scores on South Korea's version of the SAT.) He is a brand name, with all the overhead that such prominence in the market entails. He employs 30 people to help him manage his teaching empire and runs a publishing company to produce his books.

To call this mere tutoring is to understate its scale and sophistication. Megastudy, the online hagwon that Mr. Kim works for, is listed on the South Korean stock exchange. (A Megastudy official confirmed Mr. Kim's annual earnings.) Nearly three of every four South Korean kids participate in the private market. In 2012, their parents spent more than $17 billion on these services. That is more than the $15 billion spent by Americans on videogames that year, according to the NPD Group, a research firm. The South Korean education market is so profitable that it attracts investments from firms like Goldman Sachs, the Carlyle Group and A.I.G.

It was thrilling to meet Mr. Kim—a teacher who earns the kind of money that professional athletes make in the U.S. An American with his ambition and abilities might have to become a banker or a lawyer, but in South Korea, he had become a teacher, and he was rich anyway.

The idea is seductive: Teaching well is hard, so why not make it lucrative? Even if American schools will never make teachers millionaires, there are lessons to be learned from this booming educational bazaar, lessons about how to motivate teachers, how to captivate parents and students and how to adapt to a changing world.

Enlarge Image

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

South Korean students prepare to take the standardized exam for college admissions on Nov. 10, 2011. The country has a 93% high-school graduation rate.

The Saturday Essay

• China's Bad Earth (7/27/13)
• Rise of the Warrior Cop (7/20/13)
• Who Ruined the Humanities? (7/13/13)
• The Middle-Class Revolution (6/29/13)
• Why She Drinks: Women and Alcohol(6/22/13)
• Think Inside the Box (6/15/13)
• How America Lost Its Way (6/8/13)

To find rock-star teachers like Mr. Kim, hagwon directors scour the Internet, reading parents' reviews and watching teachers' lectures. Competing hagwons routinely try to poach one another's celebrity tutors. "The really good teachers are hard to retain—and hard to manage. You need to protect their egos," says Lee Chae-yun, who owns a chain of five hagwons in Seoul called Myungin Academy.

The most radical difference between traditional schools and hagwons is that students sign up for specific teachers, so the most respected teachers get the most students. Mr. Kim has about 120 live, in-person students per lecture, but a typical teacher's hagwon classes are much smaller. The Korean private market has reduced education to the one in-school variable that matters most: the teacher.

It is about as close to a pure meritocracy as it can be, and just as ruthless. In hagwons, teachers are free agents. They don't need to be certified. They don't have benefits or even a guaranteed base salary; their pay is based on their performance, and most of them work long hours and earn less than public school teachers.

Performance evaluations are typically based on how many students sign up for their classes, their students' test-score growth and satisfaction surveys given to students and parents. "How passionate is the teacher?" asks one hagwon's student survey—the results of which determine 60% of the instructor's evaluation. "How well-prepared is the teacher?" (In 2010, researchers funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation found classroom-level surveys like this to be surprisingly reliable and predictive of effective teaching in the U.S., yet the vast majority of our schools still don't use them.)

"Students are the customers," Ms. Lee says. To recruit students, hagwons advertise their results aggressively. They post their graduates' test scores and university acceptance figures online and outside their entrances on giant posters. It was startling to see such openness; in the U.S., despite our fetish for standardized testing, the results remain confusing and hard to interpret for parents.

Once students enroll, the hagwon embeds itself in families' lives. Parents get text messages when their children arrive at the academies each afternoon; then they get another message relaying students' progress. Two to three times a month, teachers call home with feedback. Every few months, the head of the hagwon telephones, too. In South Korea, if parents aren't engaged, that is considered a failure of the educators, not the family.

If tutors get low survey marks or attract too few students, they generally get placed on probation. Each year, Ms. Lee fires about 10% of her instructors. (By comparison, U.S. schools dismiss about 2% of public school teachers annually for poor performance.)

All of this pressure creates real incentives for teachers, at least according to the kids. In a 2010 survey of 6,600 students at 116 high schools conducted by the Korean Educational Development Institute, Korean teenagers gave their hagwon teachers higher scores across the board than their regular schoolteachers: Hagwon teachers were better prepared, more devoted to teaching and more respectful of students' opinions, the teenagers said. Interestingly, the hagwon teachers rated best of all when it came to treating all students fairly, regardless of the students' academic performance.

Private tutors are also more likely to experiment with new technology and nontraditional forms of teaching. In a 2009 book on the subject, University of Hong Kong professor Mark Bray urged officials to pay attention to the strengths of the shadow markets, in addition to the perils. "Policy makers and planners should…ask why parents are willing to invest considerable sums of money to supplement the schooling received from the mainstream," he writes. "At least in some cultures, the private tutors are more adventurous and client-oriented."

But are students actually learning more in hagwons? That is a surprisingly hard question to answer. World-wide, the research is mixed, suggesting that the quality of after-school lessons matters more than the quantity. And price is at least loosely related to quality, which is precisely the problem. The most affluent kids can afford one-on-one tutoring with the most popular instructors, while others attend inferior hagwons with huge class sizes and less reliable instruction—or after-hours sessions offered free by their public schools. Eight out of 10 South Korean parents say they feel financial pressure from hagwon tuition costs. Still, most keep paying the fees, convinced that the more they pay, the more their children will learn.

For decades, the South Korean government has been trying to tame the country's private-education market. Politicians have imposed curfews and all manner of regulations on hagwons, even going so far as to ban them altogether during the 1980s, when the country was under military rule. Each time the hagwons have come back stronger.

"The only solution is to improve public education," says Mr. Kim, the millionaire teacher, echoing what the country's education minister and dozens of other Korean educators told me. If parents trusted the system, the theory goes, they wouldn't resort to paying high fees for extra tutoring.

To create such trust, Mr. Kim suggests paying public-school teachers significantly more money according to their performance—as hagwons do. Then the profession could attract the most skilled, accomplished candidates, and parents would know that the best teachers were the ones in their children's schools—not in the strip mall down the street.

Schools can also build trust by aggressively communicating with parents and students, the way businesses already do to great effect in the U.S. They could routinely survey students about their teachers—in ways designed to help teachers improve and not simply to demoralize them. Principals could make their results far more transparent, as hagwons do, and demand more rigorous work from students and parents at home in exchange. And teacher-training programs could become far more selective and serious, as they are in every high-performing education system in the world—injecting trust and prestige into the profession before a teacher even enters the classroom.

No country has all the answers. But in an information-driven global economy, a few truths are becoming universal: Children need to know how to think critically in math, reading and science; they must be driven; and they must learn how to adapt, since they will be doing it all their lives. These demands require that schools change, too—or the free market may do it for them.

—Ms. Ripley is an Emerson Fellow at the New America Foundation. This essay is adapted from her forthcoming book, "The Smartest Kids in the World—and How They Got That Way," to be published Aug. 13 by Simon & Schuster. Copyright © 2013 by Amanda Ripley.