won, or 4.5 percent of the GNP, and 27.3 percent of government budget allocations. The 1980s and 1990s marked an era of democratization and economic prosperity in South Korea, partly due to the "education fever". In 1991, for the first time in thirty years, the country elected provincial and city councils in order to localize education, and leaders like Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung were able to enact major overhauls to the education system in order to accommodate democratization through methods like abolishing on-campus ROTCS training and political mobilization of students, legalization of teacher unions, and removing anti-communist texts. The MOE began to shift away from a uniform curriculum by allowing school boards to implement some minor variations in instructional content. Literacy became virtually universal in South Korea while it rose up in international ranks in math and science, especially. Despite South Korea's transition to democracy, traditional and Confucian values remained very strong. Overall, the huge strides in educational development came at the cost of intense pressure among students, high suicide rates, and family financial struggles through investment in schooling and private tutoring. However, Korea is shifting away from fully academic-based education to competency-based education. (So, K., & Kang, J. (2014) Student activism Student activism has a long and honorable history in Korea. Students in Joseon secondary schools often became involved in the intense factional struggles of the scholar-official class. Students played a major role in Korea's independence movement, particularly on 1 March 1919, which was a protest based on students' growing resentment towards restrictive, discriminatory, and hostile Japanese occupation and instruction practices. Students were also heavily involved in repeated national efforts and demonstrations against Japanese policies, with instances like the Gwangju Student Movement in 1929 and the 10 June 1926 funeral line protest. Students protested against the regimes of Syngman Rhee and Park Chung-hee during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Observers noted, however, that while student activists in the past generally embraced liberal and democratic values, the new generation of militants in the 1980s were far more radical. Most participants adopted some version of the minjung ideology but was also animated by strong feelings of popular nationalism and xenophobia. One of the most extreme and landmark movements was the Gwangju Massacre in 1980, where students were driven by a strong will to rebel through Marxist influences against the martial law government. This radicalism was paralleled by the