#51 - Steven Dhoedt

According to the PISA education ranking, Korean pupils perform significantly better than most OECD students in all categories tested (namely: math, reading, and science).Yet this success comes at a steep price: the Korean school system is often described as nothing short of brutal. Its students are among the least happy and most stressed worldwide.

At the core of this system is the Suneung (수능) examination which determines university admissions. Because only a fraction of Suneung takers will ever be admitted to the best colleges, competition is fierce. Desperate to give their children an edge, parents invest in evening schools, private tutoring and bootcamps, fueling an entire industry now worth several billion dollars.

For this episode, we had the pleasure of interviewing Steven Dhoedt, who co-directed Reach for the SKY, a documentary that premiered at the 2015 Busan International Film Festival and was selected for the DOK Leipzig festival in Germany. Reach for the SKY tells the story of several students, their families and teachers, as they prepare for the dreaded Suneung.

Steven Dhoedt is a Belgian filmmaker, producer and cinematographer. He studied film at the Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema and Sound (RITCS) in Brussels and worked for several years in Hong Kong as a freelance producer and director. He founded VISUALANTICS in 2003, a Brussels-based independent production house; his films have screened in numerous festivals worldwide and have been broadcasted in over thirty countries. He is also the director of State of Play (2013), a documentary that follows several South Korean professional video gamers.