High School Graduation Ceremony in Korea

High School Graduation Ceremony in Korea

  

 What is your country’s symbol of high school graduation? Students smiling in graduation gowns? Graduation caps thrown in the air? Maybe every country has different ceremonies, and our images of high school graduation would be different according to it. Koreans also have an tradition of graduation, and it is ruining their own school uniform by throwing flour on it on their graduation day. Even though many high school graduates enjoy it as a part of graduation ceremony, there are a lot of problems with this event.

    Before talking about this ceremony, we need to understand the school uniform in Korea. Most high schools, including public and private, have their own school uniforms. There are a few reasons why schools insist on school uniform, and one of the reasons is that they believe this school uniform helps their students’ ability to study. Many teachers and adults in Korea think that the most important thing in high school years is to study hard and go to a good college. Also, they think if they allowed them to wear what they want, the students would spend so much time caring about their fashion that they could not focus on their study. So, many schools have strict policies about school uniform. For example, when I was in high school, every student had to buy their uniforms in only a few stores my school designated. Of course, we were not allowed to change it as we wanted. In summer time, even though the weather was really hot, students had to wear winter uniforms until teachers decided that the students could wear summer uniforms. However, the problem is that many teenagers want to express themselves by their clothes and change their school uniforms.

So, there is a lot of conflict between students and teachers for 3 whole years.

    Their strong desire for expressing themselves and their anger at this suppression explode on their graduation day. The day before the graduation day, students prepare flour with their friends. On the graduation day, after the formal ceremony ends, they start to throw their flour on each other’s school uniform.

By doing this, they feel a little bit of freedom and enjoy the fact that they don’t have to wear these boring clothes anymore. Also, they can have enjoyable memories and pictures in the last day of their high school. However, before we think of it as a traditional teenager event, there are some points we should think about this event.

    It makes a lot of problems. First, many people think that it is unpleasant to see the students who are covered with flour all over their body.

In addition, they claim that teachers should do something to stop them from doing this. Second, it makes a lot of trash. In every high school graduation day, we can easily see a lot of flour thrown out on the street. Also, many students throw out their ruined uniform on the school ground or street. Third, it is serious waste of a lot of money. Actually, there are poor students who have trouble to buy school uniform because the uniforms are usually expensive. If the graduates leave their uniforms to other students who need them, it would be more a positive way to use it.

(there are some schools already doing it)

    In Korea, there is a special ceremony for high school graduation. It is ruining their own school uniform with flour. Because there is a lot of conflict between teachers and students about school uniform, it has been thought as a gesture of their desire for freedom and a tradition that makes the graduation day more fun for a long time. However, it causes many problems because it is thought as an unpleasant event by many people, makes a lot of trash, and is waste of money.

Name: Yonghee Song

Date: 04/24/2015

Teacher’s Name: Michael Eastwood