When I asked if he agreed with President Obama’s glowing rhetoric about the Korean education system, he smiled a tired smile. It’s a question he got asked often, usually by Korean reporters who could not understand what the U.S. president—or anyone—would find to like about Korea’s system.

“You Americans see a bright side of the Korean education system,” he said. “But Koreans are not happy with it.”

In some ways, Korea was an extreme manifestation of a very old Asian tradition. Chinese families had been hiring test-prep tutors since the seventh century. Civil-service exams dated back before the printing press. In tenth-century Korea, ambitious young men had to pass an exam to get a government job. The high-stakes test was, in practice, accessible only to the sons of the elite, who could afford the ancient version of test prep.