9 out of 10 who passed Seoul teacher exam are women

Nine out of 10 successful candidates for this year’s teacher employment examination for public kindergartens, elementary schools and special education schools in Seoul are women, data showed Friday, continuing a years-old trend of extreme sex-ratio imbalance.

A total of 166 applicants passed the test -- 164 applying to work at schools operated by the city government and two for national educational facilities in the city, according to the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education.

Of the 164 successful applicants for city-run schools, 150 are women. The gender of the two qualifying for state-run schools was not available.

The gender ratio is similar to the figure from the previous year, when 91.4 percent of the successful applicants were women.

Of the 164, 114 are applicants for elementary schools. Among them, 11 are men. All of the 10 who passed the test for kindergarten teachers are women.

The "man drought" was also evident in a host of education authorities in other regions who announced the results of their own employment exams Friday, albeit to a varying degree.

The extreme imbalance among teachers, particularly at elementary schools and kindergartens, is a chronic issue in South Korea.

According to Education Ministry data obtained by Rep. Kim Byung-wook, some 107 schools in South Korea didn’t have a single male teacher at the time of the 2022 survey. And 8 out of 10 teachers at elementary schools across the country were women.

Successful candidates are to be appointed in March, after they complete the 12-day job training in February, Seoul officials said.