Survey: Sleep deprived and malnourished Korean students

It has been revealed that South Korean high school students sleep late and have bad eating habits compared to the United States, China and Japan. This is the result of a survey conducted and announced by the National Institute For Youth Education of Japan on the physical and mental condition of 8,480 high school students in four countries including South Korea, Japan, China and the United States last year.

The ratio of students going to sleep past 12:00 a.m. was 65 percent, which is conspicuously higher than China (11.7 percent), the United States (17.9 percent) and Japan (45.1 percent). The rising hours of students in South Korea was also late. More than half of high school students in other countries responded that they wake up before 6:30 in the morning’ whereas only two out of 10 South Korean students said that they do so. The ratio of students who skip breakfast was the highest in South Korea with 36.1 percent, which largely exceeds Japan (6.5 percent) and China (7.5 percent), explained the National Institute For Youth Education.

Moreover, South Korea’s response to consuming instant ramen more than three times a week recently was 17.5 percent, making it the highest, followed by China (10.4 percent), United States (8.1 percent) and Japan (4.8 percent). On the other hand, South Korea ranked the lowest with respect to eating vegetables every day. Furthermore, South Korea was the only country among the four countries that surpassed 50 percent on pessimistic responses, such as “I am stressed out about entering schools and choosing a career” (58 percent) and “I usually cannot do anything right” (66.2 percent).


Won-Jae Jang peacechaos@donga.com