SEOUL — In the end, it was just a simple box of cookies, an innocent gift to a hardworking teacher from an appreciative parent.
But investigators had suspected otherwise. So they recently barged into a classroom in suburban Seoul to open the package in front of the baffled instructor and her students.
Authorities were looking to intercept a bribe -- usually a plain envelope stuffed with cash -- given by overanxious parents seeking any classroom advantage for their children as they negotiate the highly competitive school environment.
In South Korea, the deeply rooted practice of parents offering under-the-table payoffs is known as chonji. Calling the practice an economic corruption of the classroom, authorities have announced 2009 as the year of the war against such bribes.
On a national day to honor teachers this Friday, they have devised an unusual plan: On Teacher's Day, many schools will be closed and parents will be sent letters asking them not to visit their children's classrooms for at least a month.
Investigators have also stopped teachers on the way home from school to check their vehicles for chonji-related gifts.
Such measures have touched off a debate in this education-obsessed nation about who are the real perpetrators: Are they greedy teachers with their hands out or overly aggressive parents who will stop at nothing to promote their children? Is it both?
In a recent government survey of 1,660 parents of school-age children, more than half of those polled cited parents' "selfishness" in putting their kids before all others as the main reason for the practice. Forty-eight percent considered chonji a bribe, as opposed to a harmless gift.
Accepting chonji is considered a crime in South Korea if prosecutors decide the amounts are large enough, but the law does not penalize the giver, authorities say.
"Across the country, one of five parents says they have given chonji to teachers, and one of three in big cities says so," said Kim Jong-yoon, who heads a bribery investigative team for the national Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission. "This culture must be fixed and improved."
In one case, inspectors posed as parents to follow school visitors carrying envelopes and shopping bags. Kim said such tactics have brought results. One $1.50 box of candy was found to contain hundreds of dollars.
Teachers say they are often unwitting victims of a parent's neurotic drive to seek favoritism for their child.
