Cho Eung-chun, the Reform Party candidate for Gyeonggi Province governor, unveiled pledges on children, youth and education on Children's Day on Monday, vowing to "return the playgrounds to children."
"These days, children cannot even freely play soccer on the playground due to malicious complaints," Cho wrote on Facebook. "I am introducing pledges prepared to restore our children's right to grow up sweating and playing."
He pointed out that 312 elementary schools, or about 5 percent of the nation's 6,189 elementary schools, restrict physical activities during lunch hours and after school. "As safety concerns, parental complaints and alienation disputes overlap, the playground, which should be an open space for children, is becoming a 'space of regulation and prohibition,'" Cho said. "School playgrounds should be places where children run, bump into each other and learn rules."
Cho said he would overhaul the practice of restricting school physical activities. "I will reform the blanket ban on soccer and ball games, and work with the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education to establish playground usage standards and safety management guidelines tailored to each school's conditions," he said. "Rather than imposing unconditional bans, I will set realistic management standards, including adjusting usage times by grade, designating activity zones, installing safety fences and buffer spaces, and adjusting the types of balls and game formats."
He also said he would apply a "state responsibility system for teacher lawsuits" to school sports in Gyeonggi Province. "Schools do not close playgrounds because children dislike playing. It is because when accidents happen, responsibility falls on schools and teachers, and when complaints come in, the field must handle it alone," he said. "I will expand the intent of the 'state responsibility system for teacher lawsuits,' which was a presidential campaign pledge of Reform Party leader Lee Jun-seok, to fit the school sports field in Gyeonggi Province." His plan is to introduce a "Gyeonggi-style school sports responsibility support system" so that teachers do not have to respond alone to accidents, complaints and disputes arising from opening school playgrounds and physical activities. "Specifically, I will cooperate with the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education to create a school sports accident response manual, support school-level insurance and mutual aid, provide legal counseling and litigation response support, and build a joint response system for malicious complaints," he explained.
Cho also promised to push forward a Gyeonggi-style "right to sunlight" guarantee project. "After school and on weekends, I will open school playgrounds, public sports facilities and park-type community sports spaces more widely to children, and expand outdoor activity programs linked with local children's centers, care classrooms and youth facilities," Cho said. "In particular, I will prioritize support for vulnerable children's participation in outdoor activity programs."
"I will return to the children of Gyeonggi Province the right to run and play on the playground, the right to go outside, and the right to grow up healthy under the sun," he added.
