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Yoon's digital textbook project marred by serious procedural flaws from outset, says audit

Published: 17 Dec. 2025, 17:41

Former President Yoon Suk Yeol attends a court hearing at the Seoul Central District Court in Seocho District, southern Seoul on Sept. 26. [NEWS1]

The Yoon Suk Yeol administration’s flagship education reform initiative — the AI Digital Textbook (AIDT) project — was plagued by serious procedural flaws from its inception to the screening stage, an audit by the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) found Wednesday.

The AIDT project refers to an initiative aimed at reinventing primary and secondary education by deploying AI-powered learning materials. To meet an overly ambitious rollout deadline, essential validation procedures were skipped, and critical issues were ignored during the textbook screening process, which requires strict fairness, the BAI found.

On Wednesday, the BAI released an audit report on the AIDT project and issued warnings to the Ministry of Education and the Korea Foundation for Science and Creativity (Kosac). The audit began after the Democratic Party (DP), then in the opposition, pushed a request for inspection through the National Assembly in February.

The previous Yoon administration launched an ambitious plan to introduce AI-powered digital textbooks, the AIDT, across elementary, middle and high schools as part of its education reform agenda, promising personalized learning and reduced teacher workload.

However, the initiative faced deep skepticism from teachers, parents and lawmakers who argued the rollout was premature, lacked sufficient testing and training and exposed students to data privacy and technical issues.

In the BAI’s new audit report released Wednesday, these criticisms were found to have been grounded in reality, as the Education Ministry neglected basic verification procedures due to time constraints.

Jeong Sang-woo, secretary general of the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI), speaks during a National Assembly session at the National Assembly building in Yeouido, western Seoul on Oct. 16. [NEWS1]

“The 2025 rollout goal was set at the direction of then-Education Minister Lee Ju-ho, who took office in November 2022,” the BAI said. “Although the ministry initially announced it would conduct a pilot program in 2024 before gradually introducing the textbooks, it skipped the pilot entirely due to tight development timelines.”

The alternative “field applicability review” was also merely procedural, according to the BAI.

The BAI also noted that the review took place during the winter break — from December 2024 to February 2025 — making it impossible to assess classroom implementation. In practice, the review was limited to checking for basic labeling errors and whether functions were accessible.

Furthermore, the Education Ministry announced the screening process before establishing technical specifications, forcing publishers to redesign systems mid-development.

The audit also revealed serious flaws in managing fairness — a critical element of the screening process. The BAI found numerous instances where the web URLs or source code in screening submissions included the names of specific publishers.

Former Minister of Education Lee Ju-ho speaks during a National Assembly session at the National Assembly building in Yeouido, western Seoul on July 10. [NEWS1]

Under the rules, the appearance of a publisher’s name constitutes misconduct and grounds for disqualification. However, the BAI found that “the ministry effectively condoned this by instructing that exposure should not affect the outcome unless it was excessive or intentional.”

In fact, four publishers whose names were exposed during screening were later approved. One publisher even modified its data 144 times during the screening period — but there was no system in place to flag or block such activity.

The ministry was also criticized for unilaterally shifting financial burdens onto local education offices. The BAI estimated that AIDT subscription fees from 2025 to 2028 would total approximately 2.81 trillion won ($1.9 billion), yet the ministry revised its enforcement decree to make regional education offices cover the full cost.

Despite the massive investment, the response from schools was lukewarm. An analysis of usage in schools that voluntarily adopted AIDT for 2025 found that in the case of high school first-year English, 72.8 percent of students never used it.

Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union members hold a rally in front of the Ministry of Education building at the government complex in Sejong on April 14. [NEWS1]

The rollout also faced intense political backlash. The DP began clashing openly with the government after a petition to suspend the AIDT program reached 50,000 signatures in May last year.

Former DP lawmaker Kang Min-jung argued during a budget review session that it was “a waste of trillions of won to proceed with no measures in place to address digital addiction.”

“Are we going to turn our children into lab rats?” said DP Rep. Ko Min-jung, as she led the push against implementation.

The publication industry, however, pushed back against the criticism.

A student studies math using an AI digital textbook during a demonstration class at an elementary school in Chuncheon, Gangwon, on May 7. [YONHAP]

Major publishers with strong market shares retained large law firms and launched aggressive lobbying efforts targeting the National Assembly and Education Ministry. Having invested hundreds of billions of won in development, they feared massive losses if mandatory adoption was scrapped. Some publishers even filed administrative lawsuits in April after the ministry shifted its stance to allow schools to choose whether to adopt the program.

In August, following the change in administration, the National Assembly — led by the DP — passed a revision to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that downgraded the legal status of AIDT from “textbooks” to “educational materials.”

“Despite the industry’s full-court press, we succeeded in revising the law and prevented AIDT from being forcibly deployed in schools,” said a DP official.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY YOON JI-WON [[email protected]]