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July 07, 2009
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| Private education institutes, or hagwon, will be banned from providing classes after 10 p.m. from today, and whistleblowers will be rewarded with cash payments, according to the Education Ministry yesterday. But education specialists and hagwon operators were skeptical about the new government plans, after seeing a slew of countermeasures against private education fail. In addition, an individual who reports on illegal hagwon operations will be rewarded with a maximum of 2 million won ($1,577) in total. The reward-giving measure is unprecedented, although generations of administrations have spent the last three decades trying to clamp down on private education fever in Korea. According to the Education Ministry, education offices in each city and province will accept reports on illegal practices of hagwon. The education ministry will also install a call center for the same function. To improve the “effectiveness of the measures,” the ministry said it will hire 200 workers solely devoted to cracking down on illegal hagwon operation in local education offices that have 500 or more hagwon within their administrative units. “Revitalizing public education is important but at the same time downsizing private education is critical,” said Lee Ju-ho, vice education minister, at a press briefing. People reporting on private education institutes found to have taught students after 10 p.m. or to have charged above the legitimate level of tuition fees will receive 300,000 won per case as a reward. People who blow the cover on private institutes operating without formally registering themselves with a local education office will be given 500,000 won. Rewards will be sourced from respective education offices. “We assume parents who are discontent with [hagwon] or the tuition fees for a specific hagwon will make up the majority of report submitters,” said an education ministry official. The ministry won’t fine hagwon. Instead, they will be given a warning the first time they are caught. When the warnings exceed the level designated by each education office, they will be liable for suspension or shutdown. The plans are a follow-up to comprehensive measures to ease household spending on private education that the ministry unveiled on June 30. According to the Bank of Korea and the National Statistical Office in February, Korean households spent 18.7 trillion won private education last year. However, a former high school English teacher who has run a hagwon in Daechi-dong, the nation’s most popular private education district in southern Seoul, since 1996, says the government measures “won’t work this time again, definitely.” “Similar measures have repeated over and over,” said the teacher, only identified by his family name Lee. “The government belief that it can solve the private education problem by relying on citizen reports and monetary award is merely a desk theory,” said Eum Min-yong, a spokesman for the Korean Teachers and Educational Workers’ Union. By Seo Ji-eun [spring@joongang.co.kr] |
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