communist sympathizing and radicalism of students in the 1940s and 50s as a result of American occupation. The most militant university students, perhaps about 5 percent of the total enrollment at Seoul National University and comparable figures at other institutions in the capital during the late 1980s, were organized into small circles or cells rarely containing more than fifty members. Police estimated that there were 72 such organizations of varying orientation, having the change of curriculum and education system of South Korea people have been enriched in an imaginary way that makes them propel in all their studies. Reforms in the 1980s Following the assumption of power by General Chun Doo-hwan in 1980, the Ministry of Education implemented a number of reforms designed to make the system more fair and to increase higher education opportunities for the population at large. In a very popular move, the ministry dramatically increased enrollment at large. Social emphasis on education was not without its problems, as it tended to accentuate class differences. In the late 1980s, a college degree was considered necessary for entering the middle class; there were no alternative pathways of social advancement, with the possible exception of a military career, outside higher education. People without a college education, including skilled workers with vocational school backgrounds, often were treated as second-class citizens by their white-collar, college-educated managers, despite the importance of their expertise and skills in playing a role in advancing South Korea's economic development. Intense competition for places at the most prestigious universities—the sole gateway into elite circles—promoted, analogous to the Confucian system, a sterile emphasis on rote memorization in order to pass secondary school and college entrance examinations. Particularly after a dramatic expansion of college enrollments in the early 1980s, South Korea faced the problem of what to do about a large number of young people staying in school for a long time, usually at great sacrifice to themselves and their families, and then faced with limited job opportunities because their skills were not marketable. School grades Note: Unbracketed ages are in international years; bracketed ages are according to the age system in Korea. Kindergarten The number of private kindergartens has increased as a result of more women entering the workforce, growth in the number of nuclear families in which a grandparent is often unavailable to take care of children, and the view that kindergarten might give children an "edge"