Why a South Korean city is turning to a U.S. college to outsmart AI?

That suits Ma Yeonwoo, who says he enjoys debating with his classmates.

"If only the teacher talks we can have one idea, but if we all debate together, like, we can get many ideas together," he says.

This nascent educational movement addresses several concerning trends. One is that international tests such as PISA have shown a post-COVID drop in South Korean reading skills, after decades in which South Korean and other East Asian students outperformed their American counterparts.

Another is South Korea's rapid adoption of AI in education. 51% of South Korean students say they use AI chatbots to study at least once a week, according to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) figures. Students also face intense competition to pass college entrance exams, which piles pressure on them down to the pre-K school level and prompts many South Korean families to send their children to cram schools to gain a competitive edge, or to foreign schools to escape the system.

Incheon National University Professor Lee Yonghwa (center) guides a Great Books summer camp seminar at Chuncheon High School. Lee, a St. John's College graduate, established South Korea's first Great Books program at his university in 2019. Anthony Kuhn/NPR hide caption

Anthony Kuhn/NPR

"We all feel that this system leaves students with no time to read and think," because they're too busy memorizing facts to pass tests," says Lee Yonghwa, a professor of English language and literature at Incheon National University, where he co-founded South Korea's first "Great Books" program in 2019.

But now, Lee laments, "Korean students are even losing their old capacity to memorize facts because they collect facts and ideas mainly from A.I."

And if they can't reason and think independently, he adds, they can't judge the quality of the results that AI generates for them.

The limitations of their educational system motivates many South Koreans to look for alternatives, from education overseas, to educational experiments at home.

"As someone who went through this system, I felt those limitations keenly," Chuncheon Mayor Yook Dong-han said in an interview at city hall. "When I became mayor, I wanted to introduce a different kind of education and a distinct educational philosophy to the city of Chuncheon."

Chuncheon draws visitors from neighboring Seoul to enjoy its mountains, lakes and rivers, and dakgalbi, a local dish of grilled or stir-fried marinated chicken.

Chuncheon's government established an academic partnership with St. John's College last year to promote the "Great Books" educational model.

There are now 120 college students and some 770 younger students taking the "Great Books" program in South Korea, and 40 teachers in training, according to Lee Yonghwa.

Although the program is still in its infancy, Yook says it represents a "small but revolutionary achievement — a breakthrough that challenges established practices," and generated interest among participating students that has exceeded his expectations.

South Korean students following the "Great Books" model read Aristotle, Shakespeare, Euclid, and Korean authors including Nobel laureate Han Kang.

Student Shin Donghyun reads from Martin Luther King, Jr's. Letter from a Birmingham Jail at a Great Books summer camp seminar at Chuncheon High School. Anthony Kuhn/NPR hide caption

Anthony Kuhn/NPR

In one Chuncheon high school, students read Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail.

They discuss King's ideas about what kind of laws are just and unjust, and which laws citizens should obey or disobey.

Lee Yonghwa says he's impressed that students connected King's letter to their own country, such as in 2024, when citizens and lawmakers defeated former President Yoon Suk Yeol's attempt to put South Korea under martial law.

That fits the purpose of the "Great Books" model, in which "each seminar table really becomes a miniature republic, where ideas clash but people cooperate," St. John's College President J. Walter Sterling wrote last year in an opinion essay.

Through civic participation and liberal education, he adds, "we quietly stitch the fabric of our democracy…before it unravels beyond repair."

NPR's Se Eun Gong contributed to this report in Chuncheon and Seoul.