Principals Implicated in Suspicious Golf Tour

By Kang Shin-who

Staff Reporter

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education said Tuesday that it is investigating allegations that six incumbent middle and high school principals took bribes from school meal suppliers.

They are suspected of having gone on golf tours to Japan and China, with the bills picked up by school cafeteria businessmen. It refused to disclose the names of the schools. Four middle school principals and two high school principals are being investigated.

The latest corruption allegations come at a sensitive time when Seoul school heads are campaigning to drop a revised bill requiring schools to run their own cafeterias.

The government plans to make all schools directly run cafeterias instead of using outside caterers from 2010 in the wake of a series of large scale food-poisoning incidents at schools across the country in 2006.

However, the principals are opposing the revised bill, as it will impose heavy workload on schools. A group of school headmasters plan to file a petition for the use of outside meal suppliers. Currently private catering companies run some 90 percent of cafeterias at secondary schools.

According to the complaints compiled by the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, the school heads went to Japan for golf tours with the owners of school meal caterers up to four times from summer 2006.

``We were requested to rule whether they violated civil servant ethics code,'' said an official from the education office. ``If they are found to have received some kickbacks, we will punish them according to the regulations.''

kswho@koreatimes.co.kr