South Korea and Education

Today, I read an interesting article from Time magazine entitled "Teacher, Leave Those Kids Alone". Originally, I was attracted by the title of the article wondering what thing we are attacking teachers on now...come to find out that it was about South Korea.  As a teacher and as a person that follows the news, you always hear about how the United States education system is behind everyone else in the world...we often hear about countries like Finland, Singapore, and South Korea.  But honestly I am glad for our teenagers and our teachers that we are NOT South Korea.  I have never heard about how long these kids study...our students think that they do so much homework but these students really are at school from 8 am until 10 pm...WOW!  People want us to be like South Korea in terms of how much we know....but I ask at what cost I ask.