Korean university students - do they really have it tough?

I just finished reading a disturbing article in the Korea Times (with thanks to the blog Marmot's Hole for mentioning it first) about how a student who killed his mother because she was unhappy with his grades.
The first thing that came to mind was how a student could be driven to do such things! But from my prior knowledge of just how competitive and important on all levels education is to students and achieve high marks to make it into the country's top institutions, this student must have been driven to the limit where just might have not been able to take it any longer. According to the article, after the student had revealed that he had gotten a low mark (actually, his marks had been considered very good), his mother had beaten him up with a baseball bat and a golf club for many hours and was subsequent to several abuses such as being denied food. Of course, I am not agreeing that killing his mother was the logical solution, unless he was in a situation where his life was at stake. But with cases like these, how students are pressured throughout their entire life in order to get these soaring marks that will help get them accepted in prestigious universities like Seoul National University, Yonsei University or Ewha University, what these students must be going through, placing their life's worth in these entrance exams that will determine what universities they would be eligible can be so foreign to people who live in other countries.
In relation to this topic, I read an article explaining how and why South Korean universities were so poorly ranked in the world. In the paper, reviews and peer assessments by students were part of the judging criteria on opinions of South Korean universities did not have high rankings in the world, considering the intensive education model that children follow up to their last year of middle school. After such intensive pre-college preparations, students see first and second year university as a means of repaying for all the hard work they did. Some students even went to confessing that barely any studying is done. Also, seniors get permission frequently to miss out on large amounts of class times, just to be able to travel to some other city to attend an interview. This is even when the student has not finished his last year nor has graduated. Wow, these university students seem to have it so easy. When you compare it to universities of other countries, particularly in Western countries, university classes or what is sometimes referred to as contact-hours are significantly lesser than those of universities in Asia. However, this kind of study mode requires many hours of pre-studying and out of class readings. In a way, I feel that this kind of study mode takes on a more mature and therefore independent way of studying, of self-improvement all done by the student himself. Furthermore, discrimination with foreign teachers, which include lesser wages and limited access and participation with the faculty and staff, makes it unattractive for long-term stays.
It would be very interesting to write an essay about the differences of higher education between Western countries and East Asian countries. What do you think is the better kind of higher education? I know people have their own preferences, but if you were to put yourself in the shoes of, say, a politician with power to do higher education reforms, what would you do?