South Korea’s Private Education Addiction

A dispute over funding for private kindergartens has turned into a larger conversation about schooling in South Korea, one of the most education-focused societies in the world.

The trouble started last fall, when the South Korean government uncovered multiple cases of corruption and fraud at private kindergartens, which, although private, get significant government subsidies. In response, the National Assembly made moves to increase transparency among private kindergartens, and the government announced plans to require these schools to use a state accounting system to track their budgets starting in 2020.

The kindergartens protested vehemently, citing concerns about privacy and saying that these measures paint their industry in a negative light over the crimes of a few bad actors. The Korea Kindergarten Association (KKA), which represents 3,300 of the country’s 3,800 private kindergartens, planned to have its members go on strike on March 4, the first day of their spring semester.

Thanks to a backlash from parents and the government, the strike fizzled, and only around 200 schools eventually participated. Nevertheless, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education announced they would cancel KKA’s license because of their actions, which the office said violated statues against harming the public interest.

This incident exposed the importance that the South Korean public places on education, especially private education, as competition for spots in elite schools and good jobs soars ever higher. The cut-throat world of education in South Korea has even seeped into the entertainment world with recent hit show “Sky Castle.” The drama focuses on a group of affluent housewives and their quest to get their children into the top SKY universities (Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University). The show, which wrapped up in February this year, was so popular among the public that it became the highest-rated cable drama in South Korean history.

Although “Sky Castle” is fiction, it hits quite close to home for South Korean families, which dedicate huge chunks of their budgets to private education for their children. According to the Korean Ministry of Education and Statistics Korea, South Koreans spent a total of 19.5 trillion won ($17 billion) on private tutoring in 2018. With up to 73 percent of South Korean students enrolling in private lessons, that works out to an average of 3,492,000 won ($3,089) in extra education spending per student per year. This number is on the rise, too – spending on private education has risen for six straight years, and the 2018 numbers represent a 7 percent rise over 2017.

Even low-income households dedicate significant portions of their budgets to extra education – according to the government data, almost half of low-income households spent 1,188,000 won ($1,051) per year on private lessons.

But it’s not just children filling cram schools to supplement what they learn in school – South Korea’s obsession with education extends well into adulthood. Many public and private professions include an entrance exam to select new recruits, including police, prosecutors, and even multinational companies like Samsung, which means that job-seekers are hitting the books to give themselves a better shot at scoring a stable career. These tests are seeing more and more applicants in recent years, especially after President Moon Jae-in pledged to hire more than 100,000 more workers in public sector jobs to offset high unemployment and instability in the private sector.

The issue of high spending on private education has major repercussions for South Korean society beyond the obvious budgetary concerns for families. The high cost of education is often cited as one of the major reasons that South Korea’s rock bottom birth rate continues to decline – young couples are choosing to have only one child or delay having children at all to avoid the extra monthly cost associated with daycare and education. In an effort to make child-rearing more affordable for families, the South Korean government partially funds private kindergartens and provides subsidies for daycare.

But besides the steps to make public funding more transparent when it comes to private kindergartens, the South Korean government has done little in recent years to cut down on the country’s reliance on expensive private education. Seoul has tried in the past to ban private lessons past 10 p.m., but to little effect. Last year, in a move that was meant to relieve pressure on the youngest students, the Ministry of Education banned English as a second language lessons for students in first and second grade at elementary schools. But the plan backfired after parents and experts pointed out that this won’t actually stop those students from needing to learn English – they would just be forced to go to a private academy instead. (It didn’t help that the ministry relied on an argument that learning another language too early can be detrimental to children’s social skills and cognitive development, which has little to no scientific evidence.)

While weaning South Korea off private education hasn’t become a major priority for the Moon government, the strike showdown with the Korea Kindergarten Association may spark a conversation about this broader issue. Interestingly, Moon has focused on reducing working hours, cutting South Korea’s notoriously long work weeks from 68 hours to 52 hours. While this move was largely to boost employment and improve working conditions for employees, one of the other reasons was to improve work-life balance and give people more time to spend with their families, thus encouraging South Koreans to have more children. But if their children are still at cram schools when their parents get home from work earlier than before, the policy won’t actually improve that situation or the dropping birth rate.

Despite scandals like this ongoing dispute about the role of private kindergartens in South Korean education, there hasn’t yet been a concerted effort to address the core issue of overspending and overreliance on private education. Hopefully, though, the conversation over transparency in funding can turn into a larger discussion and spark proposals to improve the situation across the board.