In South Korea parents who find they have children slacking off at school, playing too many computer games or watching too much TV are increasingly trying to straighten out their under-performing kids by sending them to military boot camps.

It is no walk in the park. At the camps children are forced to train - military style - in sub-zero temperatures, crawling half-naked through snow-covered ground and doing exercises for 10 hours a day.

Kang Han-sol is at breaking point. His bottom lip is starting to quiver, his face scrunching up ahead of the inevitable tears.

Like dozens of others, Kang is stripped to the waist wearing just combat boots and camouflage pants as he crawls through the snow.

It is minus 8 degrees at Ansan, 70 kilometres south-east of Seoul, and the boot camp internees sound like a flock of bleating sheep as they drag themselves through the snow.

"I was sent here by my parents because I was spending so much time playing computers games," 15-year-old Kang said.

"With the training here I will be more motivated to stop playing these computer games and instead study hard."

Most of the 180 kids at this boot camp have been sent here because they are failing in their studies - a cardinal sin not tolerated by proud South Korean parents.

This training is designed to toughen them up, which has many of the more flabbier students on the verge of physical and emotional exhaustion.

"Nowadays many students are selfish and lacking in self-reliance," trainer Park Tea-joon said.

"They give up too easily, so many parents send their children here to correct these defects."

Just when many of the kids are ready for a break and a spot of lunch, it is time to lift some giant logs in the snow.

It is too much for some of the older kids, who actually volunteered to come here.

"My mother and father, wearing smiles, advised me to come here for a good experience," 17-year-old Choi Na-yeon said.

"I feel awfully sorry now that I decided to come, especially after anti-biochemical training in thin clothes in the snow."

In South Korea education is everything. The country ranks second in the world in the oeCD's exams for 15-year-olds.

Kids are pushed hard and it is not unknown for high school students to study up to 18 hours a day to win that treasured spot at university.

If slogging half-naked through the snow helps, then so be it.