155 instructors at arts high schools moonlighted as hagwon teachers, audit finds

An audit has found that 155 instructors who taught regular classes at arts high schools were simultaneously working as hagwon instructors.

The Board of Audit and Inspection released the findings Wednesday as part of its audit on the operations and management of arts high schools. The audit was conducted at the National Assembly's request and examined the operations and college admissions practices of the 10 largest arts high schools by student enrollment.

According to the board, 155 of the 2,522 instructors — or 6.1 percent — responsible for regular instruction at the 10 schools were also working as hagwon instructors as of 2025.

Among them, 12 used their status as arts high school instructors to promote their hagwon. Five were found to have used the college admission results of students they had taught directly at the arts high school — not at the hagwon — in hagwon promotional materials.

The board said that when instructors responsible for regular school education also teach at hagwon, they may give preferential evaluations to hagwon students, and there is a risk that public school education could be exploited for hagwon promotion or student recruitment.

The board attributed the widespread dual employment to the failure of municipal and provincial education offices to establish guidelines prohibiting the practice, or to arts high schools' failure to comply with existing prohibitions issued by their education offices.

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education had guidelines banning the dual role, but three of the arts high schools under its jurisdiction did not include restrictions on concurrent employment in their instructor contracts. One school included the restriction in its contracts but still failed to enforce it.

The board said that when instructors handling regular curricula in the same capacity as teachers also engage in hagwon activities, it creates an evaluation structure favoring hagwon students and raises concerns that public education could be used to benefit hagwon through promotion and student solicitation.

It went on to say that it had issued a caution to the Seoul superintendent of education and others, calling on them to manage relevant duties thoroughly to ensure that instructors teaching regular classes are not permitted to concurrently work as hagwon instructors.