SEOUL, South Korea – Chung Eunjung, a 46-year-old mother from Seoul, says South Korea’s plan to give children more playtime by ending Saturday classes means only one thing: more private tutoring.

President Lee Myung-bak’s government said June 14 it would recommend that schools adopt a shorter week starting in 2012, ending Saturday classes, which have been a feature of the education system since the end of the Korean War in 1953. Most schools now hold classes on two Saturdays a month.

“I’m not the only parent to feel this way,” said Chung, who already spends $1,700 a month on additional classes for her two sons. “It would be a brave mother who let them play.”

The reaction of mothers like Chung helps explain why students in Asia are outperforming the rest of the world. Nations in the region dominate the top five slots in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s assessment of reading, math and science skills. U.S. students are ranked 30th in math, 23rd in science and 17th in reading.

President Obama has cited South Koreans’ dedication to schooling as an example of the need for American kids to study harder to compete. Three out of four South Korean parents use cram schools, tutors or online learning to get their kids into college. More than half of the students in Asia’s fourth-largest economy take private math and English lessons.

Rather than creating more family time, the plan to shut schools on the weekend would be a boon for academies like MegaStudy Co., or language-course operator JLS Co., said Kim Mi-song, an analyst at Hyundai Securities in Seoul.

“This will be good news for education stocks,” said Kim. “It is clear that the amount of time students spend in private courses will increase.”

Even with the change, South Korean children will spend more time in school than their U.S. counterparts.

In his State of the Union address in January, Obama said South Korea treated its teachers as “nation builders.”

In 2009, he said: “Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea every year. That’s no way to prepare them for a 21st-century economy.”

In the latest round of the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessments in 2009, South Korea placed second in reading, fourth in math and sixth in science. Finland was the only country outside Asia to make it into the OECD’s top five in any of the three categories.

South Korean parents spend about $220 per child a month on out-of-school classes, tutoring and online learning, according to government statistics.

Traditional Confucian reverence for learning matters less to parents these days than the fear that their children will be left behind, according to Han Zun-shang, a professor of education at Yonsei University in Seoul. Annual per capita income has doubled in the past decade to $20,759 and wage inequality is increasing, said Han.

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education said it plans to add two hours to weekday classes and will reduce some vacation days to offset ending school on Saturdays.