Pro sports – children’s dream job

Kim Tae-yoon, an elementary school student living in Seoul, changes what he wishes to become when he grows up almost every month.

Kim doesn’t switch from wanting to be a medical doctor to a teacher but from soccer player to baseball player. In other words, he wants to be a professional sportsman for sure but subject what sport he will take up is constantly changing.

That is not what his parents want him to be.

In a recent Statistics Korea survey of 909 parents with children at elementary and secondary school, 16.4 percent of them wanted their children attending primary schools to become doctors, followed by teachers at 15.3 percent and civil servants at 13.8 percent.

From the children’s perspective, 14.7 percent of elementary school students want to become professional athletes, followed by teachers at 13.3 percent and entertainers at 10 percent.

Whenever famous athletes make headlines in newspapers, Kim changes his future goals. He believes that success as a professional sportsman will bring him both fame and money, and he said that figure skating queen Kim Yu-na and footballer Park Ji-sung are key people that make him have such dreams.

“I really want to be a world famous athlete like Park and Kim. I think they make a lot of money by doing what they like. I don’t know yet which sport I would like to choose but what I know is that I hope to be a professional athlete,” the 10-year-old said.

Dreaming of becoming a famous sportsman is not isolated to Kim. His case is a good example illustrating how Korean children’s preferred jobs have changed over the past decade.

Additionally, a series of television audition programs making it possible for ordinary people to rise to instant stardom greatly influenced children’s views on occupations. Singers, movie stars and comedians are increasingly viewed as having a good career, leading successful ones to gain high social status and financial success.

The statistics office also said parents of middle school students preferred their children to become teachers (18.7 percent), civil servants (17.6 percent) and doctors (15.1 percent). Middle school students themselves want to become teachers (11.6 percent), doctors (9.2 percent) and entertainers (7.4 percent).

The survey was in the statistics agency’s new book titled “Hey Kids, Let’s Blow up a Magic Balloon,’’ which contains 15 different tales, citing various statistical data concerning the life of Korea’s elementary school students.

It showed that the number of students from multiracial families increased five-fold to 46,954 in 2012 from 2006 as more Korean men tie the knot with women from China and other Asian nations. The book tells children that it is not right to bully those born to an interracial couple just because they look different.

It also covers Korea’s growing life expectancy, explaining why Koreans live longer and what the rapid population aging means for the nation. Korean men and women are projected to live for an average of 79.3 years and 85.7 years in 2020, up 28 years for men and 32 years for women from 1960.

The book also deals with an increasing number of children living with grandparents. The figure reached 68,135 across the country in 2011, twice that from 1995.

Additionally, only 75.1 percent of school students were found to have read at least one book in 2011, down from 94.3 percent in 2009 and 84.8 percent in 2007. The decline is largely attributed to an increasing number of lectures students attend at school and private learning institutes, and the wider use of smartphones and the Internet. <The Korea Times/Lee Hyo-sik>