Reporter's Notebook Republic of Korea's Education Seen Through Former and Current Seoul Education Superintendent Jung Geun-sik and Cho Hee-yeon

The government has named next year's budget "A Great Leap to an Irreplaceable Republic of Korea." It says it will create a country in semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and content that others cannot catch up to. Yet on another page of that budget plan, opposite arithmetic is written. It will abolish the education subsidy tied to domestic tax revenue (20.79%) that has been maintained for 55 years, freezing next year's education subsidy at 78.9 trillion won. If the tied system had been maintained, it would have been around 100 trillion won, so the increase of about 20 trillion won will go not to education offices but to the newly created 162 trillion won Future Response Fund. The government emphasizes "total education budget will not decrease." That is correct. However, the issue is not cuts. The problem is that in a year when tax revenue swells to an all-time high and everyone's share grows, only education's share is frozen and prevented from growing.

The government's argument is 'OECD.' South Korea's per-student education spending in elementary, middle, and high schools ranks at the top of OECD countries, so it argues it is time to adjust. Seoul Education Superintendent Jung Geun-sik (Chairman of the Council of Education Superintendents of Korea), whom I met at the Jeon Tae-il Memorial Hall in Seoul yesterday (the 2nd), directly countered this logic. In an era when everything from K-pop to semiconductors leads the world, why should education investment alone retreat to the 'OECD average'?

That is correct. The rise to the top per-capita spending is largely due to the decline in the number of children. While budgets tied to tax revenue increased, the student population plummeted sharply, so reading the enlarged figures resulting from a collapsed denominator as evidence of 'excessive investment' is nearly an optical illusion. In fact, looking at primary and secondary public education spending as a share of GDP, South Korea is at the OECD average level. Educational restructuring suited to changes in the school-age population structure is certainly necessary. However, what should be prescribed to a patient who needs restructuring is a surgical plan, not poison.

There is another unjust aspect. This boom was created together by the entire nation, and as taxes increased, the coffers of all sectors grew together. The education field had just encountered this surplus for the first time in decades. There are mountains of homework deferred due to lack of funds: declining basic academic skills, curriculum transformation for the artificial intelligence era, gaps in childcare, eroded teacher authority, overcrowded classrooms, and rural schools facing extinction. Just as the field finally had some breathing room to tackle these backlogged problems, the government says it will take that entire share to the fund coffers. With so many education issues to solve, is the demand to share in the tax increase together so unreasonable?

To use a family analogy: When parents strike it rich and plan an overseas vacation, telling their child to study with problem sets instead of a tablet and bragging "I'll buy you one particularly good workbook" is like this situation. When a family's finances improve, parents take care of the child's education first. Seeing a government that freezes children's share when the national coffers swell to an all-time high, people ask whether this is truly a parent.

Looking back, it was education that caused the student population to decline in the first place. Did children decline because parents could not afford to feed them? For decades, the answer has been that families hesitate to have children because they fear education costs. The failure of Korean education did not only produce low birth rates. On top of education that failed to teach how to mediate conflict and acknowledge differences, extreme left-right ideological conflict, gender disputes, and all manner of social discord grew. The result has been a birth rate that fell like a wingless plunge, and now we have barely stopped that plunge and grasped the thread of recovery.

Yet at this moment, the government proposes to cut education budgets. We must not break the wings of the future generation that has barely stopped falling. Cuts pushed through without thorough planning and verification will not help recovery; they will be like scattering ashes on it.

The 'reinvestment' packaging also deserves scrutiny. Of the 162.3 trillion won fund, only 45.4 trillion won is actually invested in the four priority sectors, while 104 trillion won sits in coffers under the name of 'surplus reserves.' The Education and Talent account amounts to 10.1 trillion won, the smallest of the four accounts. It is equivalent to removing 20 trillion won from education and putting 10 trillion won into Education and Talent. It is difficult to call this reinvestment.

The procedure is even more painful. In changing a system over half a century old, there has not been a single official consultation with education superintendents and educational organizations nationwide. Superintendent Jung even publicly stated last month that "there should be explanation and listening to opinions, but the procedure was quite negligent." Despite 353 educational and civic organizations demanding cancellation, the government responded with a Cabinet decision, and the bill moves to the National Assembly on the 3rd.

Yesterday at the Jeon Tae-il Memorial Hall, former Seoul Education Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon, who served three terms—a first in constitutional history—launched the educational civic organization 'Garden of Coexistence,' raising the banner of 'coexistence.' The critical understanding is that the culture of coexistence that mediates conflict and acknowledges differences has disappeared from our society, leaving only structures of confrontation and conflict, with the failure of education at its foundation. How serious did he find the conflict and confrontation in our society that he named the organization 'Garden of Coexistence'? On one side, citizens build a garden to repair the failure of education, while on the other side, as the student population has plummeted and budgets tied to tax revenue have grown, per-student education spending has risen to the top, yet under the pretext of 'exceeding the OECD average,' the government is seizing money that should go to children's education.

If reform is necessary, the least we should do is establish a minimum process of discussion first. The ball is now in the National Assembly's court. What the National Assembly must question is not the fund's scale, but whether a nation targeting averages can become irreplaceable. We hope that the statement "Invest at the average, but deliver irreplaceable results" does not become the explanation for the Republic of Korea's new budget plan.