As soon as 2020 began, South Korea began to suffer from the 2019 Novel Coronavirus. Almost all events were delayed or canceled. Buddhism's great event, which is the Buddha's Day was delayed to May 30th from April 30th. Also, a lot of cultural events and shows were delayed. In this situation, schools also delayed their start.

▲ Schools are closed due to the Coronavirus.

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed back the start of the new academic year, which would have begun last March 2. February 23rd, eight days before the intended starts, the Ministry of Education announced the delay of a start to March 9th, one week after the intended starts. However, the situation went worse, the Ministry of Education decided the second delay to March 29th. The Maginot Line delayed to seven weeks. Because of the seven-week delay, students cannot fulfill their required number of classes. March 29th already passed; however, the situation was not getting better, so the start delayed to April 6th. Moreover, on March 31st, there was a lot of spread in local communities, so the Ministry of Education finally decided to open the school online.

▲ A teacher is recording a lecture to prepare the online opening.

The online opening will be started sequentially, middle school, and high school's third-grade students will start their semester on April 9th. Then, the second grade of middle school and fourth to sixth grade of elementary school students, and first to the third grade of elementary school students will open the semester on April 16th and April 20th respectively.

▲ EBS have already started TV and online lectures.

Universities have started their online lectures already. Also, the Educational Broadcast System or EBS, have already started TV and online lectures. Their cyber classes had a lot of faults. EBS' homepage got an error on the first day. This situation is the first situation that South Korea faced, so all nations are worried and confused. The schools hope that there will be no difficulties with the online classes and hope that this situation will end as soon as possible.

April 7th, 2020

By An So-mi