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.
High school seniors worry about school reopening
Quarantine officials disinfect the classroom of a high school in the southwestern city of Gwangju, Tuesday, a day before schools reopen for high school seniors after a spate of delays due to safety concerns over the spread of COVID-19. Yonhap
By Bahk Eun-ji
By Bahk Eun-ji
Many high school seniors are voicing opposition to physically attending schools starting Wednesday, due to lingering safety concerns over the possible spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in classrooms, according to the association of high school student presidents Tuesday.
A network of high school councils in Dangjin, South Chungcheong Province, conducted a survey on 30,585 high school students across the country for three days from Sunday, and 79.7 percent of respondents said they were opposed to the reopening of schools. Asked about the appropriate timing for the physical opening, 49.3 percent said it should be decided on after at least a month to check the status of the pandemic. More than 32 percent, or 7,823 respondents, said students should be allowed to physically attend their schools two weeks after the number of daily infection falls below 10.
“We are raising our voices not because we don't want to go to school, but because we are afraid of mass infections in schools,” the association said in a statement sent to the education ministry.
Many students have also raised concerns over whether schools are ready to be opened and how effectively disease control measures will be carried out in classrooms.
A petition has been filed on the Cheong Wa Dae website asking for the school reopenings to be put on hold, with more than 230,000 petitioners supporting it as of Tuesday.
The writer of the petition, who identified himself as a senior high school student in Seoul, said “the most worrying part is the school lunch system in Korea where students and teachers normally all eat together at the same time in the same place. Under the circumstances, if one gets infected, they put many others at risk.”
Gong Ha-neul, a third-grade high school student in Mapo-gu, Seoul, said she knows several students who visited Itaewon recently.
“I heard young people like me usually do not show symptoms even if they are infected due to our strong immune systems. It's so scary that they can unwittingly spread the virus to other students in classrooms while showing no symptoms,” Gong said.
The Ministry of Education planned to reopen high schools for senior students Wednesday, 79 days after they were closed. Under the plan, younger students would return in stages over the following weeks. The schedule has already been postponed five times, due to concerns of parents who question whether the ministry is sufficiently prepared for possible mass infections in classrooms.
The recent surge in infections emerging in nightclubs in Itaewon pushed the ministry to postpone the school opening again, but it decided to press ahead with the plan as onsite classes are important for high school seniors who have to prepare for the national university entrance exam in the winter.
High school seniors in the capital will physically attend school every day, while high school second graders are scheduled to attend from May 27. The phased reopening is set to be accomplished June 8. Local education offices advised schools to choose the most appropriate measure among various options, including letting students attend school once a week, depending on their quarantine conditions.