Helping Refugee Youth: Experience of Yeomyung School in South Korea

Authors

  • Myungsook Cho

Abstract

In this essay, Myungsook Cho previews how Yeomyung School in South Korea has developed an evolving set of educational pathways for North Korean refugee youth whose schooling has been interrupted, undocumented, and shaped by trauma and displacement. Tracing the school’s shift from an exam-preparation “hagwon” model toward accreditation as an alternative school, the piece highlights how academic recognition, curriculum design, and student well-being are negotiated in practice. Cho foregrounds the everyday tensions between credential urgency and deeper learning, and between institutional requirements and the realities of students’ lives.

Keywords: North Korean refugee youth; alternative education; academic recognition; graduation equivalency exam; Yeomyung School; social integration

Downloads

Published

2025-12-17

Issue

No. 9 (2025): PLA Responses to Urgent Social Realities: Access to Education and Work for Refugee, Migrant, Displaced, and Stateless People

Section

Invited Essays

License

Authors retain copyright of their work, and readers are free to print, share and distribute materials from PLA Inside-Out as long as they respect the rights of the author.  Materials included in PLA Inside-Out cannot be published without an author’s permission.

How to Cite

Helping Refugee Youth: Experience of Yeomyung School in South Korea. (2025). PLA Inside Out: An International Journal on Theory, Research and Practice in Prior Learning Assessment, 9(9). https://plaio.org/index.php/home/article/view/319