Tech Company Helps South Korean Students Ace Entrance Tests

In 1999, while watching a home-shopping channel on television, Son Joo-eun came up with the idea for an online test preparatory school. As South Koreans were embracing broadband Internet, he thought: why not bring classes into the home, too? He turned to the Web to provide "an honest, inexpensive education available to everyone," and South Korea's multibillion-dollar test preparation industry has never been the same. Megastudy.net, the online tutoring service Mr. Son started in 2000, may be the perfect convergence of South Koreans' dual obsessions with educational credentials and the Internet. In this country, where people's status and income at 60 are largely determined by which college they entered at 18, South Korean parents' all-consuming task is to ensure that their children enter an elite university. And that requires a high score on the college entrance exam. By tapping into those anxieties, which deepen during recessions, Megastudy has become South Korea's fastest-growing technology company, with sales expected to grow 22.5 percent this year, to 245 billion won ($195 million), even as the country's economy is projected to contract.