Seoul halts foreign school project

Seoul City said Friday that it has decided to halt a project to set up more foreign schools in the capital amid public criticism that recent admission fraud cases involving existing schools resulted from poor monitoring.

The city initially planned to build another foreign school in Gaepo-dong, southern Seoul, after opening Dulwich College Seoul in Seocho-gu, southern Seoul, in 2010 and Dwight School Seoul in Mapo-gu, western Seoul, last year.

However, the two schools are among several foreign schools under investigation for allegedly admitting unqualified children from wealthy Korean families to boost tuition revenues.

“Additional foreign schools are deemed unnecessary in Seoul because the number of potential applicants has dwindled,” a city official said, without commenting on the investigation.

“More schools would mean over-investment and cause side effects. We will now find ways to use the site we bought for the envisioned school in Gaepo-dong.”

The official said the city will take measures to improve curriculum and facilities of existing schools to provide a better learning environment for students.

Educational authorities and local governments have been criticized for lax monitoring of foreign schools since the prosecution revealed that many of them violated admission rules to accept more Korean students than the stipulated quota.

Dulwich and Dwight were invited to Seoul as part of a long-term plan, launched in 2008 under the former Seoul mayor Oh Se-hoon, to improve living conditions for expatriates and draw more foreign investment to the capital.

The two schools are owned by foundations based in foreign countries. The prosecution, however, suspects their actual owners could be Koreans, and they only used the names of famous private schools in New York and London.

Under the law, only foreigners, foreign institutions and Korean educational institutions can set up foreign schools here.

Prosecutors recently raided them in a bid to secure evidence for possible criminal prosecution.

In November, the prosecution indicted 46 Korean parents for unlawfully gaining admissions for their children to foreign schools based on fraudulent documents.

Investigators found that some parents even used fabricated passports and immigration documents so that their children could be enrolled. Each of them reportedly paid up to 100 million won ($90,000) to middlemen to obtain fake passports or citizenship certificates.

Most of the parents are high placed personalities in society, such as the owners of major conglomerates, lawyers and doctors. <The Korea Times/Na Jeong-ju>