Local elections lead to major shift in academic leadership
From left, the educational chiefs of Gyeonggi, Yim Tae-hee; Busan, Ha Yun-su; Gangwon, Shin Kyoung-ho; North Gyeongsang, Lim Jong-sik; and Jeju Island, Kim Kwang-soo.
There were 13 liberals elected as educational chiefs — called superintendents in Korea — during the 2014 local elections, and 14 in 2018.
In the 2022 local elections, Gyeonggi, Busan, Daegu, Daejeon, Gangwon, North Chungcheong, North Gyeongsang and Jeju Island went to conservatives. Gyeonggi, Busan, Gangwon, North Gyeongsang and Jeju Island were until recently served by liberal superintendents.
It was the first time a conservative candidate was elected as head of the Gyeonggido Office of Education.
Seoul, Incheon, South Chungcheong, Sejong, North Jeolla, South Jeolla, Gwangju, Ulsan and South Gyeongsang elected liberals.
Educational chief candidates aren’t allowed to run on a party ticket, but their political orientations are normally shown through their campaign promises.
Cho Hee-yeon, superintendent of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, was re-elected to serve his third four-year term as Seoul education chief after winning 38.1 percent of the votes. It’s the first time for anyone to serve three terms as the Seoul superintendent.
The second, third and fourth candidates with the highest votes in the Seoul race all had conservative backgrounds and collectively received more votes than Cho, hinting at a possible victory if two of the three bowed out and threw their support to the other candidate, political analysts say. The three conservative candidates discussed the plan for six months but ultimately failed to follow through.
Cho, who has long campaigned against elitist education, will have to cooperate with four-term Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, who won the Seoul mayoral race Wednesday with the support of the conservative People Power Party (PPP), beating his Democratic Party (DP) rival Song Young-gil 59.05 percent to 39.23 percent.
Cho acknowledged possible rifts between Oh and President Yoon Suk-yeol, both from the PPP, on Thursday morning as he talked to reporters on his way to work, but said he would try to cooperate with them as much as possible.
“I hope to lock horns with an open mind and cooperate [with them] with an open mind,” Cho said.
Cho and Yoon have openly clashed on a key initiative of Cho and the former left-leaning Moon Jae-in administration to scrap so-called autonomous private high schools and foreign language high schools. As Yoon entered the presidential office early last month, he vowed to “reassess” the policy from square one.
Autonomous private high schools are private institutes that are financially independent from the government and have freedom in selecting students and developing their curriculums and tuition. Foreign language high schools are either private or public schools that allot more of their curriculums to foreign language studies. Both Moon and Cho have criticized both types of schools as stratifying Korea’s education system by wealth and status.
Similar conflicts are expected to be seen in six other major cities and provinces — Seoul, Incheon, Ulsan, Sejong, South Chungcheong and South Gyeongsang — where the political views of the education chiefs don’t match those of their mayors or governors.
BY LEE SUNG-EUN, NAM YOON-SEO [lee.sungeun@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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