KINGSTON — On an educational vacation from a school system that seems as stiff as an ironing board with nightmarishly strict teachers, seven kids from Seoul, South Korea have come to America.

They’ve landed in Kingston at David Wolfle Elementary School, where they are spending the next few months studying both the American school system and the red, white and blue way of life. And among the many things for which the U.S. is internationally known, these Korean kids are most excited to learn how to speak its language.

“(My friends) hear I’m coming to America and they want to come here but they can’t because they don’t have the money so they’ll go to Canada or Australia (to learn the language),” said fourth-grade exchange student Henry Baek.

“In Korea, English is very important,” said Emma Lee, a fifth-grader who can quite clearly convey her thoughts in English since she has been studying the language for almost four years.

Since arriving at the school Dec. 6, Lee, Baek and the five other students have impressed the Wolfle staff and students with how well they can communicate. And though a thorough study of English is a top priority for many of the kids and their parents, trip chaperone Jayne Chae said the focus of the trip encompasses much more than just the language element.

“They are not here to learn English, they’re here to see how do other people go to school, interact and just live,” said Chae, who has taught at an American academy in Seoul for the past five years. “They are here to observe more than anything.”

In South Korea, students have little time to do anything other than study, she added.

Following their normal school days — which begin around the same time as American schools and end a little earlier in the afternoon — Korean students attend a multitude of different academies for precise instruction in specific subjects. Their school day ends around 6 p.m., then students have homework.

To many in America that may seem like a form of childhood oppression, however in South Korea, it is viewed as simply the way of life.

“They have this burden over their shoulders thinking that they can’t do anything but study; it’s very structured, but they accept that, that’s the norm,” Chae said. “When they say culture difference, I’ve lived it. There are things I can’t even explain that happen in South Korea. I can’t say I understand it, but I accept it, and that’s what I struggle with everyday.”

Here, some of the struggles her students endure daily in their homeland are cast aside by enjoying common American luxuries like flexibility, creativity and play time.

“They have a lot more free time when they come here … a lot more time to be a kid,” said Wolfle principal Ben Degnin.

Wolfle’s teachers and students have decorated their school’s foyer with a Korean display and marked all of the essential educational spaces with both Korean and English labels. And though they are extremely excited about hosting the exchange program, school continues as it would during any other day.

“I’m following the curriculum that I would even if they weren’t here,” said Wolfle second-grade teacher Beth Schnidler. “As opposed to real academic focus, what they are getting is a real solid sense of what it’s like to go to school here.”

In American schools, class sizes are much smaller, by about half, Baek said, and the teachers are a lot less “scary,” Lee added. But when it comes to students, both the Wolfle children and their Korean peers are starting to see how similar they really are.

“When this is all over, I think both groups of kids will have benefited so tremendously from just seeing kids from across the world that are the same as them,” Schnidler said.

The exchange will last until February when the Korean delegation will board a plane and fly back across the ocean with an experience that could well last a lifetime.

“They don’t want to go home, they already told me that,” Chae said, sharing a story about a top-notch Korean student who came to America to study and returned to Korea as a problem child. “That’s one of the things that worries me, but at the same time, it may give them another incentive to come back (for college).”