아시아 10/04/09 KOREA - Students can opt out of chapel attendance

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KOREA - Students can opt out of chapel attendance

Published Date: April 9, 2010

A screenshot of the Baekyoung High School website which has the caption ‘Foundation of all knowledge is to worship Jehovah’

SEOUL (UCAN) — Education authorities in a Korean province have ordered a Protestant-run high school to give its students an option of not attending chapel services.

Baekyoung High School in Gyeonggi province near Seoul had a practice of making all its 1,660 students, including those who are not Christians, attend a weekly service at a nearby chapel.

It recently stopped this practice and gave students the option of attending the service after receiving an order from higher education authorities.

“We confirmed that all its students attended chapel during the first hour of class in the morning. Although the school denied that it was not mandatory, we ordered it to give them an option and transfer the chapel hour to the afternoon,” explained Kim Seon-Kyeong, head supervisor of the school Policy Division under Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education.

“We also instructed the school to give alternatives for those without religion” and instead of giving them “faith essay tests,” to give them “general essay tests,” she added.

General essay tests instead of faith-based ones

According to the school, the faith essay exams conducted four times a year mostly test students on topics related to Christianity such as the Ten Commandments, the fall of Adam and Eve, and original sin.

Under the Korean education system, the government assigns students to a school based on geographic proximity to their homes. Religious affiliation of the school or student usually is not a consideration.

A school official told UCA News, “We have conducted the ‘pious’ activities according to the founding spirit of our school. But we have now to follow the instruction of the education office since April 1.”

He said a quarter of the students are Protestants. “We give non-Protestant students alternatives to attending chapel. These are usually lectures by experts on essay writing, counseling, sex education and other topics,” he added.

However, Han Ki-nam, secretary general of the Korea Institute for Religious Freedom, doubts that the school will sincerely follow the order.

“The situation of religious freedom in high schools, especially Protestant-run ones, will not improve,” he pointed out.

“The fundamental problem lies in the notion of school operators that their schools’ founding spirit comes before religious freedom guaranteed in the constitution,” he said.

According to the Korean Educational Development Institute, as of 2009, there are 1,910 high schools serving 1,671,382 students in the country. Among these, Protestants run 138 schools with 130,557 students, Catholics run 38 schools and Buddhists run 15.