After strike, KKA faces dead end

Parents and children stage a protest in front of the Korea Kindergarten Association (KKA) office in Yongsan, Seoul, Tuesday. Parents groups filed criminal charges against the KKA for violating the educational rights of local preschoolers with its collective strike on Monday. Yonhap

By Lee Suh-yoon

Shaken by a failed strike and a series of strong countermeasures by education authorities, the nation's biggest association of private kindergartens faces an uncertain road ahead.

Last Thursday, just four days ahead of the start of the new semester, the Korea Kindergarten Association (KKA) announced 2,274 member preschools would not open to protest the ruling bloc measures that would impose greater financial transparency and regulations on private kindergarten operators.

In the end, only 239 kindergartens ― around 6 percent of all private kindergartens in the country ― participated in the strike on Monday, according to the Ministry of Education. But later in the day, following a sterner stance from the ministry and regional education offices, the KKA announced it was unconditionally dropping the collective action.

The key authority action that made the surrender was the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education's (SMOE) announcement that it would cancel KKA's license.

The license revocation would strip the KKA of negotiation power in the government's policymaking process, effectively making it nothing more than a “social gathering” of kindergarten operators.

Despite the KKA's withdrawal from the collective move, the KKA's white flag could not sway the SMOE's decision, which is backed by the public that see the KKA as a self interest group willing to hold children and parents hostage.

“We will apply article 38 of the Civil Code to the KKA, which stipulates a registered corporate body can be stripped of its license when carrying out activities outside its founding purposes or harming public interest,” SMOE Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon said in a press briefing, Tuesday. “Citizens are now calling on private kindergartens to strengthen their identity as an educational institute, one that ensures a higher level of transparency and public character.”

With the KKA's status downgraded, more moderate groups that broke away from the KKA in protest of the KKA leaders' hardline stance, like the National Association of Private Kindergartens (NAPK), are likely to step in as the main negotiation body in future dialogues with authorities. Groups like the NAPK acquiesced to the implementation of public accounting systems like Edufine early on in the public debate for better accountability at kindergartens ― sparked by the disclosure of multiple cases of corruption at private kindergartens last October.

Separately from the authorities' license revocation, a parents' group filed a complaint with the prosecution against the KKA for infringing on children's rights to education and welfare.

"According to the education ministry, 239 preschools participated in the collective suspension of classes in the new semester, and at least 23,900 students had their constitutional right to education and protection violated,” the group said in a press statement.

KKA head Lee Deok-sun is unlikely to escape responsibility for how the KKA's hardline policies have backfired. Though over 3,000 out of 3,800 private kindergartens nationwide are still part of the KKA, membership is predicted to fall.

Though funded by millions in taxpayer money, the KKA maintains the claim that stricter financial regulations are invasive, saying privately run preschools should be considered as the operator's "private property."