SEOUL — Life without tuition is unimaginable for Mr Kim Jang Joo, 20, and even more so now with the college entrance exams around the corner when TODAY met him last month.

Enrolled in Daesung Institute, a hagwon for students retaking their college entrance exam, Mr Kim rises at 7am and sleeps after midnight on weekdays. He lives in a dormitory besides his tuition centre and his parents visit him during the weekends. His tuition centre, which forbids dating, updates his mother on his academic progress every month.

Mr Kim said that he is used to the almost regimental lifestyle. It has been his goal to entering a top university since he began formal schooling. He started having tuition at 14 years old, succumbing to peer pressure.

On whether his grades have improved with the help of tuition, he smiled wryly and said: “I have been attending tuition classes for so long that I cannot tell the difference.”

Daesung Institute, which was set up five decades ago, has built a reputation on producing students who go on to prestigious universities. The hagwon is owned by Daesung Digital, a company listed on the Korean stock exchange.

Mr Kim, whose father is an academic and his mother is a speech therapist, took the college entrance exam last year but he narrowly missed out on achieving his dream of entering Seoul National University.

Unlike many students re-taking the entrance exams who will seek a deferment from the universities that they are currently enrolled in, Mr Kim quit SungKyunkwan University so that “there is no way out”.

Daesung Institute has more than 8,000 students at its seven branches across South Korea.

Its admission process is highly competitive. For instance, at its Gangnam branch last year, only a quarter of applicants were successful.

Almost every year, Daesung Institute would produce at least one of the nation’s top scorers in the college entrance exams. Daesung Institute Vice-President Kim Myung Joon said that the challenge is to help students achieve a perfect score to gain entry into the top universities. “Our role is to complement the existing school education,” he said. “We open doors for students to enter their dream universities”.

He added that employing competent tutors is the key to his hagwon’s success. The institute’s 280 tutors are evaluated based on students’ surveys twice a year. Based on recommendations by its students, the institute tries to poach public school teachers by offering to at least double their salaries. For more: Tuition madness, Gangnam style