What's Good for the Goose...(South Korean families make sacrifices so children may be educated in English-speaking countries)

Chung Gi Sup hates holidays. That's because the 45-year-old political- science professor spends them all alone in Seoul. His wife and two daughters are halfway around the world in New Jersey, where the girls attend high school and their mother does the laundry, checks the homework and drives them to after-school activities. Worried about South Korea's failing education system, they left three years ago in the hopes of learning English and, ultimately, winning the girls acceptance to an American university. In the meantime, Chung lives in a one-room apartment and sends nearly 80 percent of his $40,000 annual salary to New Jersey. He is not looking forward to this week's Full Moon Thanksgiving holiday. "I will be all alone in my room," he says. "I am sure I will miss my family even more during that time."

It's a sacrifice more and more Korean families are willing to make. Chung is part of a fast-growing demographic: men who live apart from their families so that their children may be educated in an English- speaking country. They are known as father geese, after the birds famously devoted to raising their young. The exact numbers are difficult to pinpoint. But according to UNESCO, the number of Korean students studying abroad rose from 110,000 in 1999 to 174,000 last year. Of those, about 10 percent, or 17,000, are believed to be high- school age or younger, and living with their mothers. "Among affluent families in Seoul, sending kids abroad for study has become fashionable," says Kim Ho Gi, a sociologist at Yonsei University. "They want to relieve their kids --from the pressures of Korean schools, while offering them chances of better life."

Korea's troubled economy has ...