







































 

 

 

 

 

Educational Responses to the COVID-19 

Outbreak in South Korea

Sooyeon Byun, Robert E. Slavin 
 

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21286, USA

Abstract. This paper investigates South Korean educational responses to 
school closures amid the COVID-19 pandemic, viewed with a risk and 

resilience framework. The COVID-19 crisis emerged and worsened right 

before the beginning of the new school year (March 2) in South Korea, 
and immediately led to students’ limited access to educational facilities. 

Well-established IT infrastructure and national curriculum facilitated 

the adoption of distance learning in South Korean schools. However, 
educational inequality due to family influences, and financial instabili-

ties in early care and education settings disrupted students’ optimal 
learning during the changes. The situation brought both benefits and 

challenges to South Korean education system. The adoption of distance 

learning potentially downgraded overall educational quality, but it also 
provided opportunities to improve educational content and professional 

development for teachers, and to promote individualized learning for 
students. Despite some challenges, distance learning was an effective 

alternative for South Korean schools during the COVID-19 crisis. More 

practical and research efforts are needed in order to reduce educational 
inequality and maximize the effectiveness of distance learning. 

Best Evid Chin Edu 2020; 5(2):665-680. 

Doi: 10.15354/bece.20.or030. 

How to Cite: Byun, S., Slavin, R.E. (2020) Educational responses to the COVID-19 

outbreak in South Korea. Best Evid Chin Edu, 5(2):665-680. 

Keywords: COVID-19; Distance Learning; School Closure; Educational Respons-

es; Online Schooling; Resilience.

 
 

About the Author: Robert E. Slavin, Professor, School of Education, Johns Hopkins University, 300 East Joppa 

Road 5th fl., Baltimore, MD 21286, USA. Email: rslavin@SuccessForAll.org. 

Correspondence to: Sooyeon Byun, School of Education, Johns Hopkins University, 300 East Joppa Road 5th fl., 

Baltimore, MD 21286, USA. Email: sbyun10@jhu.edu. 

Conflict of Interests: None. 



Byun & Slavin. Educational Responses to the COVID-19 Outbreak in South Korea. 

Vol.5, No. 2, 2020 666 

HE COVID-19 crisis emerged during the winter break in South Korea. It was 
just before the beginning of the new school year, which is typically March 2. 
The official first COVID-19 case in South Korea was identified on January 20. 

The situation rapidly worsened after February 18, which was the beginning of the 
community-level mass infection, involving approximately 10,000 additional cases over 
the following month. 

In the initial stage, most schools did not experience any serious learning disrup-
tion. Only a few schools that had scheduled graduation ceremonies in late February had 
to modify their plans. All early care and education (ECE) centers were operating full-
time. As the beginning of the new school year approached, however, South Korean ed-
ucational authorities had to make a series of difficult decisions to deal with the increas-
ing health crisis. The winter break became longer for primary and secondary schoolers. 
Young children were suddenly taken out of ECE centers where they used to spend most 
of the day. The COVID-19 pandemic brought an unprecedented educational challenge 
to schools and ECE centers in South Korea.  

This paper investigates South Korean educational responses to school closure 
amid the COVID-19 pandemic, viewed within a resilience framework. In the face of 
adversity, organizations should demonstrate resilience for survival, not only to rebound 
from the negative influences of the adversity, but also to use the situation as an oppor-
tunity for advancement and transformation (Lengnick-Hall et al., 2011). This study re-
views the detailed process of educational responses to school closure in South Korea, 
assessing risk and protective factors associated with the educational challenge. Then we 
analyze positive and negative consequences of the educational responses, and provide 
practical and research implications for South Korean schools and ECE centers based on 
the findings.  

School Closure and Reopening in South Korea 

The increased health risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic immediately led to 
students’ limited access to educational facilities. Due to the strong contagiousness, high 
fatality rate, and the lack of a vaccine for the new coronavirus, school buildings were 
closed to prevent school-based mass infections. The Ministry of Education (MOE; 
2020a) delayed the beginning of the school year for 5 weeks. Students were offered 
online self-directive learning materials during the period. Teachers provided individual-
ized social and emotional support to students and parents via electronic methods such as 
online learning platforms, phone calls, or SMS messages. Meanwhile, MOE prepared 
for full-scale online schooling, collaborating with wireless service providers to expand 
web server capacity and traffic capacity of government-operated online learning plat-
forms (Park, 2020). Starting on April 9 and gradually increasing until April 20, full-
scale online schooling officially began for primary and secondary schools, starting late 
for the first time in South Korean education history (MOE, 2020a). During the period of 
school closure and online schooling, elementary schools offered emergency care ser-
vices to children of working parents.  

T 



Byun & Slavin. Educational Responses to the COVID-19 Outbreak in South Korea. 

Vol.5, No. 2, 2020 667 

MOE had suggested that schools would physically open when daily new cases 
were maintained under 50 for more than 7 consecutive days (Oh, 2020). However, 
MOE waited until early May, when there were fewer than 50 new cases per day for al-
most a month, to officially announce a plan for physical reopening of schools. This ini-
tial plan was postponed for an additional week because small-sized community-level 
infections emerged locally right after a long holiday weekend in early May, involving 
more than 250 new cases. The official reopening of school buildings, although it was a 
partial opening, was phased in grade by grade from May 20 to June 8 (MOE, 2020b).  

MOE (2020d) only recommended 12th graders to come to school daily, and 
suggested reduced services to all other grades. Only small schools with enough space 
could accommodate all students to come to school every day. Each school surveyed 
parents to make decisions about how many days and hours students would physically 
come to school. In most schools, students were divided into multiple groups and each 
group alternately came to school for one to three days per week, or bi-weekly. Distance 
learning was continued for the rest of the days.  

Elementary schools seemed to be efficiently managing social distancing. 
Schools implemented multiple preventive measures to keep children away from each 
other, from the school gate to the classroom. 
 

“We don’t let them go to the restroom together. We only give them a 5-

minute break, and even for the 5 minutes, we provide them individual 

activities to prevent them from playing with each other. We have parti-

tions between each seat, and have foot stickers to keep the distance 

when children are lining up. We have thermal imaging cameras, hand 

sanitizers, and wet tissues in school, and encourage students to bring 

personal water bottles.” (A personal conversation with an elementary 

school teacher, June 15, 2020) 

 
Similar efforts were going on in secondary schools, but older students who 

spent longer time in school reported difficulties in keeping the social distancing (e.g. 
Lee, 2020). 
 

“…during the break, students walk arm in arm, chat without wearing 

masks, and fool around with each other, and teachers gave up on disci-

pline.” (A newspaper column of a teacher; Choi, 2020)”  

 
Unlike primary and secondary schools, most ECE centers in South Korea were 

operating full-time when they encountered the COVID-19 outbreak, because most cen-
ters only have a 1-week winter break at the end of December. South Korean ECE cen-
ters can be categorized into daycare centers and kindergartens. Daycare centers serve 
children of ages 0 to 5, and are under the administration of the Ministry of Health and 
Welfare (MHW). Kindergartens serve children of ages 3 to 5, equivalent to preschools 
in the United States, and are under MOE’s administration. Beginning in March 2020, 



Byun & Slavin. Educational Responses to the COVID-19 Outbreak in South Korea. 

Vol.5, No. 2, 2020 668 

both daycare centers and kindergartens are following a unified national ECE curriculum 
emphasizing play-based learning. However, because daycare centers and kindergarten 
are governed by different governmental institutions, their responses toward the COVID-
19 crisis varied slightly as well.  

Following MOE’s guidelines, kindergartens were closed on March 2, and reo-
pened on May 27. Daycare centers were officially closed on February 23 by MHW’s 
order (MHW, 2020a). The closure officially continued until the end of May, when 
MHW gave autonomy for local governments to decide whether they would extend the 
closure or reopen daycare centers. Both kindergartens and daycare centers, however, 
provided emergency care services during the period of closure, and were not permitted 
to refuse children who requested the services. No distance learning contents were of-
fered to preschool aged children at the national level. Some kindergartens shared educa-
tional videos and learning packages with children, but many young children had to ei-
ther stay at home without any official educational support, or attend ECE centers using 
emergency care services with increased risks of infection. The attendance rate for ECE 
centers’ emergency care services were 10% right after the closure, but it gradually in-
creased and reached close to 70% in mid-May (Choi, 2020; MHW, 2020b).  

Social distancing is almost impossible in ECE settings. There are not enough 
physical spaces to keep 1-meter distances in most ECE centers in South Korea, and 
more fundamentally, young children are not developmentally mature enough to follow 
instructions for social distancing (Weber, 2020). During the emergency care services, 
ECE centers in South Korea could only utilize limited options to prevent infections, 
such as making children wear masks all day, and not accepting children with respiratory 
symptoms.    
 

“My daughters have to wear masks for the entire period that they stay 

in the center, from the moment that they step in until I pick them up. I 

feel sorry about this.” (A personal conversation with a parent of young 

children, April 20, 2020)     

 

“My son’s ECE center is very sensitive about coughing or sneezing. 

When kids are coughing, the center refuses them even though they don’t 

have a fever. Once, I went to the center to drop off my son in the morn-

ing, and the teacher refused to take him right in front of the door be-

cause he was coughing. I had to take him back home.” (A personal con-

versation with a parent of a young child, June 30, 2020)   

Educational Responses Associated with Risk and Pro-

tective Factors 

Assets for Distance Learning  



Byun & Slavin. Educational Responses to the COVID-19 Outbreak in South Korea. 

Vol.5, No. 2, 2020 669 

Distance learning was in the center of educational responses to the COVID-19 crisis in 
South Korean primary and secondary schools. Relying on distance learning, schools in 
South Korea were expected to prevent school-based mass infection without compromis-
ing students’ academic learning. Two key assets enabled the relatively smooth imple-
mentation of full-scale online schooling in South Korea. First, the country benefited 
from its well-established IT infrastructure. Most regions in South Korea are accessible 
to a highspeed Wi-Fi network, and devices for digital learning are widely utilized (e.g., 
Silver, 2019). The digital learning platform used for online schooling was based on 
cloud servers. Therefore, capacity could be rapidly scaled up just in nine days by in-
creasing the number of cloud servers, so that they could handle the sudden surge of us-
ers (Lee, 2020). Access to smart devices was also not a problem for most schools. Dur-
ing the COVID-19 crisis, only 0.2 million among 5.5 million students in primary and 
secondary schools reported that they needed to get devices for distance learning, and 
schools and local governments could easily rent their own devices to those students be-
cause they were equipped with more devices than they needed (Lee, 2020). 
 

“For students, most already have electronic equipment such as a 

smartphone, laptop, desktop, or tablet. In my school, all 1,000 students 

have an electronic device for online learning and teaching.” (A blog 

post of a high school English teacher; Hwang, 2020) 

 
Second, having a national common core curriculum allowed the entire student 

population to easily transfer to online schooling. Under a centralized education system, 
South Korean schools have used a national curriculum for almost 70 years, since the 
end of the Korean War (Seth, 2002). As all schools are following the same curriculum, 
distance learning contents had already been developed and provided by the Korea Edu-
cational Broadcasting System (EBS) for many years, based on the national curriculum. 
Schools and students have been encouraged to actively engage with these distance 
learning contents, and to facilitate the engagement, Korean college admission tests have 
intentionally incorporated those contents. Based on the high-quality digital learning 
contents and know-how that have been accumulated for decades, South Korean schools 
could deliver timely distance learning lessons despite the unprecedented COVID-19 
health challenges (Shin, 2020). 

Televising services and contents of EBS even enabled varying educational ap-
proaches depending on the ages of children to provide developmentally appropriate in-
struction. First and second graders were believed to be too immature to effectively en-
gage in virtual communications, and were recommended not to be exposed to digital 
devices for long periods. Most schools allowed these young children to take distance 
learning classes through EBS, without interacting with computers or smart devices 
(MOE, 2020c), although some schools provided virtual learning opportunities to these 
children as well (Lee, 2020). First and second graders also received physical learning 
packages to enable them to learn without accessing digital learning platform (Lee, 
2020).  



Byun & Slavin. Educational Responses to the COVID-19 Outbreak in South Korea. 

Vol.5, No. 2, 2020 670 

 
“Teachers shared the broadcasting schedule of EBS with parents so 

that they could turn on the television and show relevant lessons to chil-

dren. Parents of first and second graders could either access the EBS 

contents online or show them on television.” (A personal conversation 

with an elementary school teacher, June 15, 2020) 

Challenges from Family Influences and Financial Instability 

Although the assets and resources in education system and the society enabled quick 
implementation of large-scale online learning, schools and ECE centers went through 
diverse risks for successful adjustment to the changes due to the COVID-19 crisis, such 
as variabilities in family influences and financial instability in ECE centers. 

Variabilities in Family Influences 

South Korean educational responses to the COVID-19 crisis inevitably brought funda-
mental problems associated with family backgrounds. In South Korea, the culture of 
‘work from home’ is not settled yet, thus, only about 60% of workers could at least par-
tially work from home even in the peak of the pandemic (Shin, 2020). Therefore, when 
schools were closed, working parents who were financially unable to hire a nanny, or 
find a family member who could take care of children, had to use emergency care ser-
vices offered by schools or ECE centers, potentially increasing the risk of COVID-19 
infection for their children (Kim, 2020).  

Moving toward partial school reopening, working parents had to worry about 
not being able to use emergency care services during distance learning days (Lee & 
Shin, 2020).  
 

“Children go to school once a week and continue online schooling for 

the rest of the days, so if there are no emergency care services, working 

parents have to quit their jobs. Emergency care services need to contin-

ue even after school reopening.” (An interview with a parent in a news-

paper article; Lee & Shin, 2020)  

 
On the other hand, some stay-at-home parents complained about opening 

schools too early, and a few of them even chose to keep their children at home after 
school reopening to avoid possibilities of infection (Kim, May 27 2020; Yoo, 2020).  
 

“Can you understand that, among two children living in the same place, 

one goes to school every day while another goes to school once in a 

couple of days? How can we keep children healthy amid school reopen-

ing determined by majority rule? Why do you enforce school reopening 

in this ridiculous way while COVID-19 is ongoing and there’s no reme-

dy for it? Please don’t forget what the most important thing is. School 

reopening should be postponed until either a vaccine or a remedy be-



Byun & Slavin. Educational Responses to the COVID-19 Outbreak in South Korea. 

Vol.5, No. 2, 2020 671 

comes available for public.” (A petition for the Blue House by a parent, 

May 26, 2020, https://www1.president.go.kr/petitions/589251)  

 
The COVID-19 crisis uncovered a stark contrast of experiences between stu-

dents from different family backgrounds. Some were kept safe from every possible 
source of infection while some were forced to go to schools for emergency care services, 
dealing with increased health risks, during the period that they were not allowed to go 
to school. 

Online schooling itself also created environments that magnified the function 
of families in students’ care and education, which enlarged the educational gap between 
high- and low-income students (Hwang, 2020). For instance, for distance learning, stu-
dents had to follow a series of processes requiring strong IT literacies, such as setting 
up computers, installing relevant software programs, accessing course websites, down-
loading resources, and submitting assignments. Students with stay-at-home parents who 
were familiar with technology could easily follow these steps and adjust to the transi-
tion to distance learning. However, low-income students with limited access to digital 
technology, or students raised by grandparents who were more likely to be IT-illiterate, 
experienced challenges in each of these processes (Ju & Lee, 2020).  
 

“As schools are reopening, I requested for a computer at the community 

center and received one to install at home. But the community center 

said that they can’t set it up, and I also couldn’t do that. So, it’s just sit-

ting there (without being set up). … I can’t help her (=granddaughter) 

(because I don’t know anything). She’s sitting in front of the computer 

all day long, but I have no idea whether she’s studying or just surfing 

the web.” (An interview with a grandparent raising a sixth grader in a 

newspaper article; Ju & Lee, 2020)  

 
Once students and families overcame all the initial barriers, they still had to be 

self-directive to efficiently manage time and schedules. Taking classes per se only took 
several hours per day, but students then had to deal with long assignments (Kang, 2020). 
Without the physical presence of teachers, primary caregivers who can stay at home, or 
families who have financial capability to hire tutors to manage students’ efficient online 
learning, provide higher quality education to students (Hwang, 2020). According to a 
recent survey, the average daily learning hours during online schooling was reduced to 
half of those in the regular school years (Kang,  2020). However, many students, partic-
ularly those from middle class homes, individually received private education to make 
up the educational gap (Kang et al., 2020).  

Like many countries, South Korea has long suffered from income-based educa-
tional gaps (Byun & Kim, 2010). In particular, widespread private education has func-
tioned to worsen the educational inequality due to differential family influences. Ac-
cording to the Korea National Statistical Office (2020), about 75% of students partici-
pated in private education in 2019, and the gap in receiving and expending on private 

https://www1.president.go.kr/petitions/589251


Byun & Slavin. Educational Responses to the COVID-19 Outbreak in South Korea. 

Vol.5, No. 2, 2020 672 

education between low- and high-income families has been growing for the past several 
years. While at least some types of private education are found to have positive associa-
tions with improved academic achievement (e.g. Byun, 2014), differential access to 
private education depending on family socioeconomic status already has been a critical 
contributor to educational inequality in South Korea (Choi & Park, 2016). Dealing with 
increased family responsibilities for care and education due to the COVID-19 crisis, and 
with families’ greater reliance on private education using differential financial and so-
cial resources, the current situation is exacerbating this chronic challenge.  

Financial Instability in ECE Centers 

South Korea provides universal preschool education to all children. Primary caregivers 
can decide whether they will keep their children home and receive childcare subsidies, 
or send children to ECE centers and let the government pay the base tuition. ECE cen-
ters can charge additional costs from parents but the maximum amount is limited by the 
government. Public ECE centers tend to be financially stable under this financial struc-
ture because they receive government support to cover key expenses including teacher 
salary and facility repairs. Private ECE centers, however, have to take care of the key 
expenses by themselves, while the maximum costs that they can charge from parents 
are limited. Therefore, without financial flexibility, losing children immediately results 
in financial burdens in private ECE centers (Lee & Chung, 2016).  

For the first one or two months after the COVID-19 outbreak, most parents 
chose to keep children at home. Some parents cancelled the enrollment of their children 
at ECE centers so that they could receive the childcare subsidies from the government 
(Choi, 2020; Kim, 2020). This caused a severe financial crisis in private ECE centers, 
particularly in home-based childcare centers (small-sized daycare centers operating in 
an apartment unit or in a single home, usually having a maximum capacity of 21 chil-
dren) which have the least financial flexibility among private ECE centers.   
 

“Home-based childcare centers are facing the most difficulties. As 

many children cancelled enrolment, classes were dissolved, and teach-

ers lost jobs.” (From a discussion among educational professionals; 

p.243, Kang et al., 2020) 

 

Even though parents kept children enrolled in ECE programs, many com-
plained that the government was paying ECE centers instead of families, while families 
were taking care of children. Some refused to pay the monthly costs that they had to pay 
in addition to the base tuition paid by the government (Choi, 2020). Meanwhile, ECE 
centers had to pay teacher salaries and rent because they were operating as usual to 
serve children using emergency care services. As a result, ECE centers, particularly 
private kindergartens whose additional monthly costs are the greatest in general, en-
countered severe financial challenges due to the COVID-19 crisis (Kim, 2020). 
 



Byun & Slavin. Educational Responses to the COVID-19 Outbreak in South Korea. 

Vol.5, No. 2, 2020 673 

“There really can be a riot among parents in April. They complain, 

‘How can I pay anything when I never sent my child to your facility? My 

child never set foot in your classes.’” (An interview with an ECE pro-

gram director on television news; Han, 2020)  

Consequences of the Educational Responses 

Dealing with school closure due to the COVID-19 crisis, South Korean schools and 
ECE centers utilized assets and resources in the education system and the society to 
quickly adjust to the sudden changes in educational environment. However, some of the 
educational responses in South Korea produced undesirable consequences in schools. 
One of the most prominent challenges was differential and downgraded educational 
quality. 

Adopting distance learning, primary and secondary schools could choose 
whether to offer live classes, recorded classes, or assignment-based classes for distance 
learning. Some teachers offered at least partial live classes while some only provided 
recorded classes. Even with the recorded classes, teachers who have relevant IT skills 
and knowledge recorded their own lectures, while many only shared the EBS learning 
contents (Shin, 2020). Teachers expressed concerns about the quality of contents and 
instruction because of the short period of preparation and limitations in the means of 
instruction. 
 

“Teachers couldn’t be prepared enough because we were told to pro-

vide online learning classes in only one week.” (From a discussion 

among educational professionals; p.68, Kang et al., 2020)  

 

“Most teachers don’t have experiences in online classes. … (Authorities) 

say that we can easily offer live classes using a smartphone, but if we do 

it without enough infrastructure or experience, and fail to meet students’ 

expectations, it can generate distrust in education in general.” (An in-

terview with a high school teacher in a newspaper article; Shin, J., 2020)  

 
“There was a tendency for downward leveling to keep everyone on the 

same pace in online classes.” (From a discussion among educational 

professionals; p.23, Kang et al., 2020) 

 
Students also expressed negative impressions about online classes. According 

to Oh (April 23, 2020), in a survey of high school students, almost 70% of 12th graders 
and more than 55% of 10th and 11th graders reported that they felt negatively about 
online learning classes. About 40% of them said that the quality of education was much 
lower in online classes, and they were more difficult to focus on. More than 25% said 
that they experienced technological difficulties, and more than 15% said that there were 
limitations in assignments and evaluations (Oh, April 23, 2020).  
 



Byun & Slavin. Educational Responses to the COVID-19 Outbreak in South Korea. 

Vol.5, No. 2, 2020 674 

“If I only watch 60% of EBS contents, I’m marked as attended. … Actu-

ally, I sometimes take a nap or do other things while EBS videos are be-

ing played. Some of my friends studied for the college entrance tests 

during classes.” (An interview with a 12th grader in a newspaper arti-

cle; Shin, Y., 2020) 

 
Parents were concerned about the varying quality of learning depending on 

teachers. Some parents were disappointed about the low quality of classes recorded by 
teachers, and some complained about teachers who only shared EBS contents, saying 
that those teachers were not doing their jobs (Jeon, 2020; News1, 2020). Because many 
students attended classes at home, parents who have multiple children could easily ob-
serve the classes and compare classes offered by different teachers and schools. 
 

“My younger child’s school has live classes, and shares videos record-

ed by teachers. But my older child’s school only plays EBS videos. As a 

parent, I naturally compare the two schools and teachers.” (An inter-

view with a parent in a newspaper article; News1, 2020)  

 
Despite the challenges, schools and ECE centers in South Korea also identified 

positive aspects of the changes associated with the COVID-19 crisis, which can provide 
practical and research implications for potential advancement and transformation of the 
field of education in the future.  

First, some teachers felt that the new educational setting due to the COVID-19 
crisis provided increased opportunities for teachers to utilize more diverse resources in 
classes, and to spend more time for the improvement of learning contents and instruc-
tional quality, because of the flexibilities in time and schedule (Lee, 2020).  
 

“There were improvements in preparation for classes and the quality of 

classes due to online schooling.” (An email communication with a 

teacher, May 30, 2020) 

 
In particular, teachers in ECE settings felt that they benefited from the changes 

due to the COVID-19 crisis. Both kindergartens and daycare centers were transferring 
to a newly implemented play-based curriculum since March 2020, and the reduced 
classroom capacity provided opportunities for teachers to test and practice the new cur-
riculum in more comfortable settings. 
 

“(Daycare) teachers actually liked the situation that less children came 

to the center. They’d been worried about the transition to a play-based 

curriculum, and this situation allowed them to practice the new curricu-

lum in the smaller classroom that they could handle more easily.” (A 

personal conversation with an early childhood researcher, May 18, 

2020) 



Byun & Slavin. Educational Responses to the COVID-19 Outbreak in South Korea. 

Vol.5, No. 2, 2020 675 

 
Second, distance learning also enabled more effective individualized learning 

for students. Students had increased flexibility because they could choose the best time 
to take the recorded classes and to work on assignments. Teachers also had more flexi-
bility time-wise so they could provide more individualized feedback to promote chil-
dren’s learning.   
 

“Online classes are good for students’ individualized learning. It is 

good that students can adjust the pace of the lecture, or take the same 

class repeatedly.” (An email communication with a teacher, May 30, 

2020) 

 
“I feel that I never have given one-on-one feedback as deeply as what 

I’m doing these days. … I can see each of 27 children’s notebooks in de-

tail, and can provide individualized responses. For the first time, the in-

dividualized learning became possible. When we were in the classroom 

altogether, this was impossible.” (From a discussion among education-

al professionals; p.21, Kang et al., 2020) 

Implications 

School closure and full-scale online schooling provided unexpected natural experi-
ments in the field of education in South Korea. It is too early to evaluate the effects of 
the educational responses to the COVID-19 crisis in South Korea. However, initial sta-
tistics show that at least online schooling was successful in providing learning opportu-
nities to a broader range of students than was typical in normal schooling settings, even 
though it also increased family-based learning gap. Online attendance rates reached up 
to 98.8%, which is higher than 93%, the usual attendance rates in the beginning of regu-
lar school years (Nam, 2020; Oh, April 22, 2020). Jeon (2020) suggests that easy access 
to classes and increased flexibility in timing and format could have encouraged more 
students to attend classes. Or, it could also be the case that teachers utilized more chan-
nels to encourage students’ participation in classes (Jeon, 2020; Oh, April 22, 2020).  
 

“Students are marked as ‘attended’ if they cover more than 60% of the 

content. But many students do not take online classes on time, so their 

academic progress rates in the distance learning system often appear to 

be much lower than where they should be. Teachers pester parents by 

texting, messaging, and calling, to make children take the classes so 

that they can be marked as attended. I think there are more difficulties 

among children to participate in distance learning classes, and more 

disruptions in learning.” (A personal conversation with an elementary 

school teacher, June 15, 2020) 

 



Byun & Slavin. Educational Responses to the COVID-19 Outbreak in South Korea. 

Vol.5, No. 2, 2020 676 

The reliance on distance learning probably will continue for a while. Even after 
the reopening, many schools are being closed daily due to new COVID-19 cases rising 
in the neighborhood or within the school. Whenever schools feel that the health of stu-
dents and teachers are threatened due to the novel coronavirus, they can easily transfer 
back to full-time online schooling until the situation is relieved. The pandemic is ex-
pected to come back (Wan & Johnson, 2020), and it is not clear when the partial school 
reopening will be scaled up to full-scale physical schooling. The distance learning infra-
structure that South Korean schools has established this time will continuously enable 
schools to prioritize students’ health without compromising academic learning.  

Moreover, as the quality of online learning classes rapidly improved over time, 
and after students and teachers experienced unexpected challenges in face-to-face 
schooling, public opinion is leaning toward online schooling. According to S. Kim 
(2020), a recent survey showed that approximately 55% of students who experienced 
face-to-face schooling after online schooling expressed a preference for online school-
ing.  
 

“Although I ask questions, students don’t answer that much. … Since 

we’re all wearing masks, students sitting far from the teacher can’t hear 

the teacher’s voice well, and the teachers are affected because they 

have to speak loudly. … I’m not sure whether face-to-face classes are 

offering higher quality learning experiences to students than online 

classes.” (An interview with an elementary school teacher in a newspa-

per article; Kim, 2020) 

 

“After children came back to school, we are actually controlling chil-

dren more. … To be honest, school reopening is causing high stress for 

schools. However, we’re not sure whether having children in the school 

building with all these efforts will be more effective than online school-

ing. Children who are coming to school only come once a week. Even 

when they are in the school, they are not allowed to work together. Par-

ents who don’t want to send kids to school are still keeping children at 

home.” (A personal conversation with an elementary school teacher, 

June 15, 2020)     

 
With the mixed messages about online schooling and physical school reopen-

ing in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, and without scientific evidence on the effec-
tiveness of both schooling methods, it is hard to make decisions on the best strategy to 
provide the most optimal education for children. However, based on some of the posi-
tive consequences of online schooling in the midst of the health crisis, distance learning 
can become an alternative strategy to increase access to high-quality education. Rather 
than merely pointing out negative outcomes of online schooling, it may be the time to 
welcome the new era of education, and to concentrate research efforts to counteract ed-
ucational inequality. 



Byun & Slavin. Educational Responses to the COVID-19 Outbreak in South Korea. 

Vol.5, No. 2, 2020 677 

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Received: 30 June 2020 

Revised: 02 July 2020 

Accepted: 09 July 2020 

 
 


	OriginalArticle-Byun-BECE_title_15July2020
	OriginalArticle-Byun-BECE_Maintext15July2020

