Vice principal humiliates students not paying school meals

There has been a heated online debate over students who were humiliated for not paying for school meals. The vice principal of Chungam High School in northwestern Seoul reportedly told students who were standing in line for lunch on Thursday, “You haven’t paid millions of won since you were a freshman. Don’t eat,” and “Go away. You’re doing harm to other students.” He said so while checking whether students paid for school meals or not in the corridor of the school cafeteria.

“We haven’t received 82.3 million won (75,400 U.S. dollars) for school meals for the recent four years,” the school said. “We can hardly handle the increasing loss.” The households, which frequently did not pay school meals for one reason or another though they are capable of, are also problematic, but how the vice principal reacted is not desirable, either. He should have made the claim in a classroom and it was not right to drive out students who went to the cafeteria for lunch. The school has been involved 32 corruption cases including embezzling construction costs and an accounting fraud in 2011 and the education authority asked the school to punish 29 people. However, it refused the punishment and as a result it took 670 million won (613,830 dollars) less in budget. It is doubtful whether it is now blaming students for the shortage of the budget.

Meanwhile, there is another controversy over school meal in South Gyeongsang Province. Governor Hong Jun-pyo diverted the budget for a free school meal program, or 64.3 billion won (58.9 million dollars), to the purchase of EBS books and education costs for students from low income households. People have different views on this. Some argue it is right to abolish the populist policy while others say he has gone overboard. Many people raise their eyebrows about the way the governor pursued the conversion, while opposing the free lunch program. To be qualified for a free meal program, a student has to submit some 10 kinds of documents, which seem to lack consideration.

A free school meal program was recently used as a subject of “Gag Concert,” a KBS comedy show. In a new section called “The Minsang Debate” on Sunday, the moderator abruptly asked panelists, “Do you agree a free school meal program or not?” When a panelist said, “It’s important because it is our children’s eating…,” then the moderator said, “Then, you agree with it.” When the panelist said, “Hong Jun-pyo…,” the moderator said, “Then, you support Governor Hong.” Although it was a comedy show, it was bittersweet to see the show because it satirically reflected our reality: “all or nothing” instead of discussing “how.”

ysshin@donga.com