Private kindergartens group's license revoked

Lee Jeong-suk, left, an official of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, hands over a notification letter revoking the license for the Korea Kindergarten Association to the association's Secretary General Kim Cheol, at the group's office in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, Monday. / Yonhap.

By Bahk Eun-ji

Seoul's education office said Monday it has revoked the license of the Korea Kindergarten Association (KKA) over the group's series of collective actions that inconvenienced parents and caused public criticism.

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE), which has authority over the nation's biggest association of private kindergartens, notified it of the decision to cancel the license.

The decision came about two months after the KKA threatened to postpone the opening of the spring semester on March 4 in protest of the government's push to adopt a more transparent financial management system. The group said all of its 2,275 member kindergartens would not open, but only 239 took part in the strike, due to strong public criticism and the authorities' stern response to the collective action, and the KKA retracted the action later in the day.

“We decided to nullify the KKA's license, as its collective action postponing the opening last month was threatening parents and children despite the educational authorities' strict warning of harsh administrative punishment,” SMOE Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon said in a statement, Monday.

According to the relevant law, the SMOE can revoke the license of a corporate body that acts against the public interest. The office said the KKA threatened parents and children through the collective closure, which was a clear violation of children's right to be educated and harmed public interest.

“Even though the KKA canceled the strike within a day, still 239 schools postponed their opening. Their action forced parents to look for alternative childcare options. Moreover, relevant government agencies, such as the ministries of gender equality and interior and safety, had to operate an urgent childcare system in response to the association's action, resulting in large socio-economic costs,” Cho said.

Cho said the KKA also withdrew the strike in fear of public denunciation, not because it recognized its action violated children's basic right to be educated.

The office also said the threats made by shutting down the KKA, which essentially held parents and children hostage to obtain their goals, didn't start this year but have been ongoing for years.

It also said the group spent its funds on massive demonstrations it staged in protest of government policies, and such expenses are against the articles of the association, which is also a cause of license revocation.

The license revocation stripped the association of negotiation power in the government's policymaking process. The KKA will now become nothing more than a social gathering of kindergarten operators.

The group is considering filing an administrative suit to annul the SMOE's decision.

The association has been fiercely protesting the government's drive to reform private preschools, after last year's state audit found many of them to have misused government subsidies.

As the government planned to introduce Edufine, a state-management accounting system, for all private kindergartens as a countermeasure, the association denounced the move by claiming the government was trying to control their “private property.”

After the association backed down, almost all large private kindergartens accepted adoption of the accounting system, according to a survey by the education ministry last month.