I live on the sixth floor on a building on a hill. From around noon, the shadow of this building casts itself on the playing field of Okjeong Middle School. From my window, I sometimes look over it and observe. It’s easy to see the social dynamics of junior high in South Korea. Girls chatting in small groups. The minority of boys who prefer basketball to soccer. The awkward boys not good at sports, who play-fight with each other at the edge of the field. Notice all the boys wearing the black school uniform. I pity them, wearing those cumbersome clothes all year. The uniforms are expensive. Students can only afford one or two of them, so they start to smell from lack of washing. I can attest to this because I taught at a junior high in Japan for two years, and the classrooms could really start to reek. Some of the rebellious kids in Japan would modify and individualize their school uniforms, in spite of the helpless protests of the teachers — no such modification seems to take place in Korean schools, where even the hair length of both male and female students is still regulated by school rules.
