Review of 'Re-evaluating education in Japan and Korea: demystifying stereotypes' by Hyunjoon Park, New York, Routledge Studies in Education and Society in Asia, 2013, 156 pp., £85.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-415-59552-0

In this highly readable book, Hyunjoon Park undertakes a series of secondary analyses of the data set produced by Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). The purpose of the analyses is straightforward: to subject, to systematic empirical validation, the prevailing stereotypical assumptions about Japanese and Korean education, the two national education systems in East Asia that have consistently achieved exceptional outcomes in the aforementioned international academic assessments and yet are often associated with all the stereotypical negativities about standardized education systems. According to the author, those assumptions are: (1) standardized education systems in Japan and Korea are inadequate in terms of nurturing talented students; (2) they fail to develop students' creativity and independent thinking due to their curricular focus on memorization and rote learning; (3) high academic achievement of Japanese and Korean students results from the success of private supplementary education (often called "shadow education"); and (4) Japanese and Korean educational systems, characterized by the high level of educational standardization and the considerable degree of uniformity among schools, can be treated as one system. Park allocates separate chapters to each assumption and successfully problematizes it through systematic empirical validation.