사립유치원비리문제에대한새로운시각

Abstract

We often encounter news of corruption scandals involving embezzlement, illegal internal transactio, and inadequate hiring of founder’s family members of Korean private preschools. The paper reveals that much of this corruption stems from sudden and unjust institutional changes, not because of the individual immorality of preschool owners. Originally, large portion of Korean private preschools started in the form of self-employed business, like restaurants and private hospitals. Therefore there was no legal distinction between the money of preschool owner and the preschool itself. After 2012, government began to regard all the private preschools as legal persons and prohibited transferring preschool’s money to the owner which had been regarded as natural aspect of managing preschools. Extracting income from the preschool that the owner founded himself or herself has become a crime. Such a policy change violates both the privates property right by the Constitution of Koreaand the principle of trust prescribed by the Administration Act. If current policy persists, many private preschools will be replaced by public ones and the cost of early childhood education will soar because unit cost of education of public preschools is double that of private ones. If we want to prevent such tragic situation from happening, government should allow transition period and appropriate compensations for the contributions of preschool owners.