International Airport last December for her flight to Los Angeles-except for the

fact that she was 8 1/2 months pregnant. The airline made her sign a waiver in

case she went into labor during the 12-hour passage. It was a risky trip, but

Young Jin (who doesn't want her family name in print) was flying to deliver her

unborn child from Korea's hellish school system.

Koreans are education zealots, partly because of Confucian tradition but also

because a degree from a top university is a passport to status and a comfortable

life. The problem is that getting into good Korean universities has become so

competitive that parents are going great distances to let their kids avoid the

whole stressful mess. The favorite ticket is to get them American citizenship,

which is guaranteed to anyone born on U.S. soil. Dr. Kim Chang Kyu, an

obstetrician practicing in a rich neighborhood in Seoul, estimates that every

year thousands of women are going to the U.S. to deliver babies-not to migrate

but to get their children the document that, 17 years hence, might allow them a

shot at a place in a U.S. university.

Travel agencies are offering three-to four-month package childbirth tours, which

include airport transfers, an apartment to live in before and after the delivery,

medical treatment at clinics catering to Koreans, sightseeing and assistance in

getting a birth certificate and passport for the newborn. Total cost: $20,000.

Young Jin, who didn't go on a tour, had a hard time doing the paperwork on her

own. But seven weeks after landing, she had what she wanted-a bouncing baby boy

with an American passport. The two happily returned to Seoul. "I want my child to

have time to play, like a normal kid," she says. If she had to worry about his

getting into Korean universities, Young Jin's son would have been in cram school

by age 7.

A U.S. passport doesn't get anyone into college or pay the tuition bills after

admission. But in Korea it's viewed as an insurance policy: if a kid falters in

the tough, local system, he can pick up and move and get onto the easier American

path. A 34-year-old mother who had her second child in Boston two years ago (and

who asked not to be identified) says she simply wanted a better education for her

child when he gets to school age. "The American system is better than the Korean

in every way you can imagine," she says.

The U.S. State Department isn't crazy about the trend, but tourist visas are

given freely to well-heeled Koreans who don't appear to be illegal alien risks.

Some airlines don't let women in advanced stages of pregnancy on aircraft, but

others, such as Korean Air and Air France, are more accommodating.

According to Arugus Lee, CEO of Los Angeles' Hana Medical Center, which delivers

at least five babies from Korean visitors a month, education is but one of three

reasons they come to deliver. The others: parents think their children will end

up working in the U.S. at a good job; and that the kids can avoid South Korea's

mandatory 26-month military duty. That's produced some heat: travel agencies that

arrange the tours tend to be secretive and do most of their business by e-mail.

Few mothers want to go public with their experience. But most mothers insist

they're not being unpatriotic by delivering abroad. They say that unlike other

foreign nationals who want passports or green cards to escape their home

countries, they're not abandoning South Korea. Life there suits them just fine

except for one thing: school sucks.