The sanity of this South Korean professional's and mother's epiphany makes me dizzy. I've just never read or heard such clarity in all my years in Busan.

Parents' perception of and attitudes to their children’s life skills must change. If you are satisfied with the short-term gain of your child winning the competition with the neighbor's, then by all means stake everything on college entrance. But in a country where changes two or three decades hence are impossible to foretell in the global era, perhaps it is better to think of making a long-term investment. Our success formula may have been effective in achieving Korea's ascent to the level of a medium-developed country; at the threshold of becoming an advanced nation, they no longer serve us so well. Our labor productivity per hour, at US$20.4 as of 2006, is near the bottom of the OECD or 26th among the 29 countries surveyed. It accounts for only 40 percent of the $49.90 of France and the $50.40 of the U.S., but our working hours are the longest. If we want to become an advanced country, we should either become more creative at work, producing more added value in the same number of hours, or become more productive in fewer hours. It's high time that we learned time management skill from countries that have conquered time effectively.

It's almost uplifting, if I didn't know her opinion was unique.

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