Payments by parents are common in an education- obsessed nation, write JOHN GLIONNAand JU-MIN PARKin Seoul
IN THE end, it was just a simple box of biscuits, an innocent gift to a hard-working teacher from an appreciative parent.
But investigators suspected otherwise. So they recently barged into a classroom in suburban Seoul to open the package in front of the baffled instructor and her students. Authorities were looking to intercept a bribe – usually a plain envelope stuffed with cash – given by overanxious parents seeking any classroom advantage for their children as they negotiate the highly competitive school environment.
In South Korea, the deeply rooted practice of parents offering under-the-table payoffs is known as chonji. Calling the practice an economic corruption of the classroom, authorities have announced 2009 as the year of the war against such bribes.
On a national day to honour teachers today, many schools will be closed and parents will be sent letters asking them not to visit their children’s classrooms for at least a month.
Investigators have also stopped teachers on the way home from school to check their cars for chonji-related gifts.
Such measures have touched off a debate in this education-obsessed nation about who are the real perpetrators: are they greedy teachers with their hands out or overly aggressive parents who will stop at nothing to promote their children? Is it both?
In a recent government survey of 1,660 parents of school-age children, more than half cited parents' "selfishness" in putting their kids before all others as the main reason for the practice. Forty-eight per cent considered chonjia bribe, as opposed to a harmless gift.
Accepting chonjiis considered a crime in South Korea if prosecutors decide the amounts are large enough, but the law does not penalise the giver, authorities say.
"Across the country, one of five parents says they have given chonjito teachers, and one of three in big cities says so," said Kim Jong-yoon, who heads a bribery investigative team for the national Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission. "This culture must be fixed and improved."
In one case, inspectors posed as parents to follow school visitors carrying envelopes and shopping bags. Kim said such tactics have brought results. One $1.50 box of sweets was found to contain hundreds of dollars.
Many South Korean parents consider chonjia necessary evil, an attempt to compete against richer or more influential families who already have an advantage when it comes to getting their children into the best universities.
"I gave some chonjibecause of the concern that the teacher might treat my kid differently if I didn't give any money when other moms did," said one parent, who asked not to be named. Last year, South Korea passed a law that forbids teachers to ever teach again if they are fired for taking money from parents. Statistics on the number of teachers fired for the practice and the number of parents who give money are hard to come by, however.
Kim Dong-hee, a mother of two grown children, says “Competition in college entrance exams is too intense here. And teachers’ subjective evaluations are more influential than objective tests. It is a culture of give and take.”
Some teachers make no excuses about accepting chonji. A parent wrote a letter to a Seoul newspaper claiming that she had offered a teacher a gift worth $70 and that the teacher had suggested that it was not enough, saying, "I can only get a pair of shoes with this money."
In light of the new government vigilance, many parents are finding new ways to ingratiate themselves with teachers, investigators say. Many now send the bribes by online shipping to avoid the long arm of the law. – ( LA Times-Washington Postservice)