Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Private cram schools hit by virus outbreak
A woman passes a closed front door of a private study school in Seoul, Wednesday, due to fears of COVID-19 virus spreading. /Korea Times photo by Ko Young-kwon
By Bahk Eun-ji
By Bahk Eun-ji
Hagwons, or private cram schools, are grappling with financial difficulties as they remain closed due to many parents' growing reluctance to send children to them amid the worsening coronavirus outbreak, according to the association that represents them, Thursday.
The Korea Association of Hagwons (KAH) said it has appealed to the government to support half of a hagwon's monthly losses based on the amount they reported to the National Tax Service to help educators in the private education industry continue to make a living.
The association said private cram schools have already spent a lot of money on disinfecting their buildings and purchasing hygiene products to prevent the spread of the contagious virus among their students.
“If the period we should close the doors of our institutes is prolonged, many of our members will not be able to recover financially,” the KAH President Park Jong-deok said.
38-year old Kim Tae-yun, said she had no intention to send her 14-year old daughter back to the private English institution teaching her TOEFL until the virus epidemic subsides.
“What kind of parents want to send their children to such a place and increase the risk of infection? I'm also deeply concerned about how well disinfection processes can be carried out in those private study institutes,” Kim said.
Given the potential risk of the private study institutes becoming hotbeds for mass infection, most cram schools have voluntarily postponed their opening dates.
The Ministry of Education (MOE) put off the spring semester for all kindergartens and secondary schools across the country by three weeks in a measure to combat the fast-spreading virus. The spring semester will begin March 23.
Roland Choi, 36, an owner of a private English academy in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, said it is difficult to follow the government's instructions as his family's livelihood is at stake.
“The trickiest part is that no one knows when this will end. If the government advised us to suspend our operation for just a week, most of the owners would do so for the sake of their students' safety. But this will definitely require the government to come up with measures to compensate hagwon operators for any financial losses during the worsening situation that all of us are observing,” Choi said.
The KAH claimed that while the owners of hagwons have to refund their tuition fees to parents when they are closed, they still have to pay expenses such as office rent and instructor wages.
“The government's support is highly needed to share the burden being placed on private study schools,” Park said.