These days, it is a hot potato that many people debate whether "the 0-hour system", the supplementary lessons before school starts, should be abolished or not. This problem has been talked about many times before, but it became larger that even concerns of the society and Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development are focusing on the matter.
Most Korean high school students go to school till half past seven in the morning, with their half closed eyes, carrying heavy bags full of books. They are busy to get up and go to school, so most of them do not have enough time to have breakfast. To help students to enter a college, high schools have excessive supplementary lessons and their lessons should start early in the morning. The system, however, is inefficient, because, as the school starts so early, students are still tired and sleepy during the lesson and only a few can concentrate at that time.
The start of this debate came from a TV show, broadcasted on every Saturday evening on MBC. The program "Let's do it", a program of "Exclamation Mark(!)", suggested that many high school students go to school, not having their breakfast. The program was started to inform us how many students could not eat breakfast as they had to go to school so early and why the system was inefficient. In addition, they reported the importance of breakfast, saying that eating breakfast is good for health and brains.
During the show, it showed students in foreign countries, like UK, Japan, France and Vietnam, in February. In comparison with other countries' students, Korean students had to go to school so early, they did not have enough sleep, because they had to stay at school or be awake till the late of night to study. On the other hand, the students in those four countries, they had enough time to eat breakfast and they did not seem to be exhausted or tired as they went to school at about 9 o'clock in the morning. After these programs were broadcasted, the opinion for the abolishment of 0-hour system became the majority.
It was an unexpected result that "Let's do it", just an entertainment TV show hosted by a comedian, attracted so much public's interests. Although the series that showed other countries students were ended, still, people debate about the system, and have extended the issue to educational problems in our society. Many students write their opinions about the system on the guests board on the internet site of MBC. "Children and Youth Forum" has demanded to abolish it to high schools, and national authorities of education started to control them. "World Internet Federation For Youth" is conducting a campaign on the internet for the discontinuance of the 0-hour system. It started the 5th of March, and more than 30 thousand people have signed.
The 0-hour system has been a routine maintained for decades but it is about to disappear by a TV program that ran only for a few months. This event shows how powerful mass media is. The producer of the show, Kim Young-hee, said, "Students not having breakfast shows the problems of our country's educational policies. Our young students go to school at the earliest time of morning in the world." He wishes to find back our young students' rights to eat breakfast, and now it seems that his intention is successful.
And many other TV programs, news, newspapers are dealing with the subject. From this incident we see that a TV program relying on public can be powerful and effective. A TV program is so powerful that it may chnge our society. Therefore, TV programs have to recognize their responsibility and influence to the public.