#60. 교과서 튜닝 -- Improving your school experience

One of the most striking thing when I moved from Korea to North America was the fact that you don't own your textbooks (called 교과서 in Korean). In North America (at least, in my experience!) the textbooks in schools are bought in bulk in hardcover, and rented to the student for the semester. If you damage it, you have to pay a penalty or replace it, so you take very good care of your textbook.

On the other hand, in Korea, you are provided all of your textbooks (free of charge, if I remember correctly), which are paperbacks and quite small -- the textbooks are smaller not because Koreans learn less in school, but because they have many more subjects, often around 15 or so. I've also found that the North American schools pick and choose the units being covered from the textbooks, while the Koreans tend to cover everything that is in the textbook. The Korean textbooks are often very dense and to-the-point as well.

A set of grade seven textbooks. From the top, Math, Social Studies, Korean 1&2, Music, English, Career Studies, Physical Education, Health, Informatics, Science, Home Economics and Technology, and Appendix to Social Studies.

Anyway, you own these books, and you are free to take notes, or write on your textbooks as you please. What do the Korean 급식s do when you suddenly get a bunch of free books that you don't really care about?

Well, you set out to create an internet legend. The practice of "교과서 튜닝" or "textbook tuning" has been popular for several decades, and it is still going strong. In Korean, "튜닝" or "tuning" almost exclusively means "doing some modifications to improve the object." It is often used in the context of cars, but in this case, it is applied to textbooks.

Usually, your goal is to modify a page (or the cover) of the textbook to make it funnier. If you do a good job, your post achieves the fifteen minutes of internet fame. Here are some examples of what the Korean students do in their free time.

Left is original, right is modified. She looks more stylish, for sure!

Left is original (wearing the Korean traditional clothing called 한복), and right is modified.

The title reads "torture and massacre (already twenty people)." You have to think a little, but the original title of the textbook was "과학" meaning "Science." Some words were added in to make "고문과 학살."

The original textbook was called "문학 (하)," or "literature (volume 2)." The title has been changed to "항문 학대, 고문(하)자." This means "abusing your anus, let's torture." Can you imagine carrying this around for the entire year?

You can be as creative as you want with these textbooks, and almost everyone does it at some point. Ask your Korean friends about their experiences with 교과서 튜닝, and you'll hear some amusing answers!