[The Second Take] Schools Reduced to Manpower Dispatch Companies

'Next Sohee' Sheds Light on the Death of a Jeonju Call Center Trainee
Schools Obsessed with Employment Rates See Students as 'Numbers'
Sixty Years of Field Training System, Educational Environment Still Lacking

"I love you, customer. How can I help you?" "I asked to cancel the day before yesterday, so why is it still active?" "Ah, customer. If you extend the cancellation or renew the contract now, it will be immediate..." "Hey, I already told you last time that I’m not doing that, and I set the date for the day before yesterday! What are you trying to do?" "If you extend the cancellation, customer..."

This is the daily routine of Sohee (Kim Si-eun) in the movie 'Next Sohee.' She is about to graduate from a specialized high school and is doing field training at a customer center. The company outsources work from a major information and communication corporation. Sohee guards a desk less than 1 meter wide, blocked by partitions, for more than eight hours. She can leave only after reaching a set number of calls. The department is the Save Team, where only those with at least one year of experience are assigned. Since the customers are cancellation applicants, they are basically full of complaints. Failure to defend results in disadvantages. Salaries are paid differentially according to rank. "It says here 1.6 million won?" "Sohee is still in the probation period. She’s a trainee." "What about incentives?" "Those also fall far below the basic figures."

This is based on the 2017 Jeonju call center trainee death incident. Struggling with harsh working conditions, she took her own life after five months. Director Jung Joo-ri vividly exposes the reality of being driven to hell under the name of field training. Schools obsessed only with employment rates, the Ministry of Education that does not supervise or manage, companies exploiting children by abusing the system... All are obsessed with numbers. Schools and the Ministry of Education focus on employment rates, companies on performance. Each tries to raise them by any means, including differentiation and discrimination. The resulting disease is always hidden behind visible achievements. Even when disasters happen, the hope is only for them to resolve on their own.

There have been several similar incidents, such as the Seoul Guui Station screen door death. There will be more in the future because the cause is a structural defect. Meister high schools and general specialized high schools differ from the budget allocation stage. From 2010 for five years, the former received an average annual support of 8.2 billion won, the latter 3.6 billion won. Naturally, students with good middle school grades flocked to Meister high schools. Companies also preferred them. Meanwhile, general vocational high schools became precarious. Obsessed with employment rates, they began to see students not as 'people' but as 'numbers.'

There are limits to schools discovering companies on their own without cooperation from local governments or related agencies. There is no way to induce participation other than offering cheap labor. They have fallen into the role of manpower dispatch companies, leading industrial field training dispatches. They do not care how harsh the conditions are for their students. As the homeroom teacher in 'Next Sohee' says, "That’s how social life is. Do you think I’m not like that? I got scolded a lot by the vice principal today. Those kids who went to the factory all came back. I told them to hold on a few more months. Sohee, you have to endure."

The field training system was formally introduced in 1963 with the Industrial Education Promotion Act. Students were to complete field training at designated industrial sites while enrolled. Even then, problems such as lack of active participation from industries, paralysis of systematic training programs, and insufficient related budgets were rampant. Industrial sites were not prepared at all to provide educational environments.

Sixty years later, nothing has changed. The Moon Jae-in administration announced a plan in December 2017 to completely abolish early employment-type field training. However, the Ministry of Education presented a revised plan two months later and changed its stance. It only added a caveat that it applies to companies meeting certain standards such as safety, but in fact, it followed the previous system. Students are still treated as 'passing labor.' The Ministry of Education cites realism: "Parents want it, students want it, society wants it." Is that really so?

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.