Diversification of High Schools and the Lives of High School Students in South Korea : Focused on a Case Study of a Foreign Language High School and a Charter School

In the cities of South Korea, general high schools have been equalized by education policy after 1970s, but diversification is proceeding recently. In the former part of this paper we will review this diversification trend, and in the latter we will introduce the case study which was conducted in March 2009. In the case study we visited five types of schools (including three high schools, one prep school, and one elementary school), and the main focus in this paper is on a foreign language high school and a charter school which are the new types of high school in South Korea. Features of these schools and some interview data are discussed