Bill Would Require Private Tutors To Register or Face Fines or Prison

In a bid to drive down the cost of expensive extracurricular tutoring, a National Assembly committee on Wednesday introduced a bill requiring tutors to register with local education boards.

If the bill passes in the plenary session, private tutors would have a month after its taking effect to secure permission. Those who register would receive certificates to display in their classrooms or to their clients. Those caught tutoring without having registered would be punished by fines or, in extreme cases, imprisonment.

"The revised law aims at getting people to report their activity and pay taxes justly to the government," an official at the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development said. "If the new law settles down, we expect expensive private tutoring to fade away gradually."

A former law banned all private tutoring except for that given by undergraduate and graduate university students. Last April, however, the Constitutional Court lifted the ban, saying that people had an inviolable constitutional rights to receive tutoring and pursue happiness.

The new approach will permit tutoring, but regulate it for the purpose of making it affordable to a wider range of students.

Under the proposed legislation private citizens such as housewives or office workers who tutor students without registering would pay a fine of 1 million won ($800). If caught a second time, the fine would rise to 2 million won. A third violation would be punished by a fine of up to 3 million won and up to a year's imprisonment.

The law would ban teachers from tutoring altogether. They face imprisonment and a 3 million won fine on first offense, if caught. Undergraduate and graduate students would be exempt from the registration requirement.

If it passes, the new law would be proclaimed to the public through a Cabinet meeting. It would then take effect after three months, around July.

by Kang Hong-jun