Reporter's Notebook Understanding South Korea's Education Through Former and Current Seoul Education Superintendents Jung Geun-sik and Cho Hee-yeon

The government has named next year's budget "A Great Leap Toward an Irreplaceable South Korea." They say they will create a nation where semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and content cannot be matched by others. Yet on another page of that budget plan, there is completely contradictory arithmetic. The government abolishes the education subsidy linkage to domestic tax revenue (20.79%), which has been maintained for 55 years, and caps next year's education subsidy at 78.9 trillion won. If the linkage had been maintained, it would have been around 100 trillion won, meaning the approximately 20 trillion won increase will go not to education offices but to the newly created 162 trillion won Future Response Fund. The government emphasizes that "the total education budget will not be reduced." That is true. However, the issue is not a cut. The problem is that in a year when tax revenue swells to record highs and everyone's share increases, the education sector's share alone is frozen and prevented from growing.

The government's argument is centered on "OECD." Since South Korea's per-student education expenditure at the elementary and secondary level ranks at the top of OECD nations, they say it is time to adjust. On the 2nd, at the Jeon Tae-il Memorial Hall in Seoul, I met Jung Geun-sik, superintendent of Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education and chairman of the National Association of Provincial Education Superintendents, who directly challenged this logic. He argued that when all fields from K-pop to semiconductors lead the world, why must education investment alone retreat to the "OECD average"?

That is correct. A significant factor behind the rise to the top of per-capita spending is the decline in the number of children. While budget linked to tax revenue increased, the student population sharply decreased, so the denominator collapsed and reading the inflated figures as evidence of "overinvestment" is almost an optical illusion. In fact, when measured by elementary and secondary public education expenditure as a percentage of GDP, South Korea is at the OECD average level. Educational restructuring appropriate to the changing school-age population structure is certainly necessary. However, the prescription for a patient needing restructuring should be a surgical plan, not poison.

The grievance lies elsewhere. This current prosperity was created together by the entire nation, and as tax revenues increased, all sectors' coffers expanded together. The education field was just beginning to experience this financial relief for the first time in decades. There is a mountain of postponed tasks: declining basic academic achievement, classroom transformation for the AI era, childcare gaps, damaged teacher authority, overcrowded classrooms, and rural schools facing extinction. Just as the education sector was finally finding some breathing room to tackle these long-overdue tasks, the government now intends to take that entire share and put it into the fund's coffers. With so many education problems to solve, is the request to share in the tax increase that grew for everyone really so unreasonable?

To use a family analogy: when parents hit the jackpot and plan an overseas trip, they tell their child to study with workbooks instead of buying a tablet, while boasting "I'll specially buy you one good problem set." When family finances improve, parents prioritize their child's education. Seeing a government that freezes children's share even as the state's coffers swell to record highs, we have reason to ask whether this is truly acting as a parent.

Looking at the root cause, the decline in students stems from education itself. Was it because parents couldn't afford to feed children? For decades, the answer has been that families cannot bring themselves to raise children out of fear of education costs. The failure of South Korean education has not only produced low birth rates. Atop education that failed to teach conflict mediation and acceptance of differences, extreme left-right polarization, gender conflicts, and all manner of social discord have grown. The result has been birth rates plummeting like a bird with no wings, and only now is the decline stopping and recovery finding a thread of hope.

Yet at this moment, the government proposes cutting education budgets. We must not allow this to be the moment when we break the wings of future generations that have barely stopped falling. Drastic cuts pushed through without thorough planning and verification will not help recovery; it will be like scattering ashes upon it.

The "reinvestment" packaging also needs scrutiny. Of the 162.3 trillion won fund, actual investment in four key sectors is 45.4 trillion won, while 104 trillion won is stacked in a coffers with the name "surplus funds." The education and talent account is 10.1 trillion won, the smallest of the four accounts. This amounts to taking 20 trillion won from education and putting 10 trillion won into education and talent. It is difficult to call this reinvestment.

The process is even more painful. While changing a system over half a century old, there has never been a single formal consultation with education superintendents and educational organizations across the nation. Superintendent Jung publicly stated last month that "explanation and consultation should have taken place, but the procedure was very neglected." Though 353 education and civic organizations demanded cancellation, the government responded with a cabinet resolution, and the bill moves to the National Assembly on the 3rd.

Yesterday at the Jeon Tae-il Memorial Hall, Cho Hee-yeon, the former education superintendent who served three terms as Seoul superintendent—a first in Korean constitutional history—launched the civic educational organization "Garden of Coexistence," raising the banner of "coexistence." The underlying awareness is that coexistence culture, which mediates conflict and acknowledges differences, has disappeared from our society, leaving only confrontation and conflict, and that education's failure is at the root. Given how serious the conflicts and confrontation in our society he has witnessed, it is understandable why he named the organization "Garden of Coexistence." On one side, citizens are building a garden to repair education's failure; on the other side, while the student population has plummeted and budgets linked to tax revenue have grown, pushing per-student education spending to the top, the government is taking money that should go to children's education under the pretext of "exceeding the OECD average."

If reform is necessary, the first step is establishing a minimum discussion process. The ball is now in the National Assembly's court. What the National Assembly must examine is not the size of the fund, but the question: can a nation that targets average become irreplaceable? I hope that "Invest at the average level, but deliver irreplaceable results" does not become the sentence that explains South Korea's new budget plan.