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| Mothers in Yongin look for school uniforms for their children at a second-hand uniform market. Mothers will no longer have to worry about this because the city government will pay for the uniforms. /Courtesy of Yongin City Government |
By Kim Se-jeong
Yongin City, 40 kilometers south of Seoul, will provide free school uniforms to all middle and high school freshmen there this year.
According to the city government, the policy will benefit almost 23,000 students, saving them 296,130 won each.
The free school uniform program has been on the minds of many local governments as part of a social welfare policy, but many had to drop it due to budgetary constraints. Yongin has allocated 6.8 billion won for the project.
The city is waiting for final approval from the Ministry of Health and Welfare which is due by February and is positive it will get the approval.
Yongin is nearly as large as Seoul in area with a little more than 1 million inhabitants.
Besides the free school uniform policy, Yongin will also expand its free school lunch program to cover high school students starting next month March.
Currently, the program only covers elementary and middle school students. The city government will spend 32 billion won this year for the free lunch program, 7 billion won up from last year.
"This is to share financial burdens with parents who are already under mounting pressure due to high education expenses," the city said in a statement.
The city has also expanded assistance for mothers with newborn babies starting Jan. 1.
The city is paying part of the costs for hiring after-delivery assistants for all mothers in the city. Until last year, the benefit was available only to mothers from extremely low-income families.
The city hopes the expanded support will encourage more women to have babies. Korea's birthrate was 1.17 per woman in 2016, lower than the replacement birthrate to sustain Korea's population.
The city has been doing other things like giving all mothers with newborn babies a gift box worth 100,000 won.
Yongin Mayor Jung Chan-min said "improving the lives of 1 million citizens, particularly parents, is my priority for 2018. I will keep myself low and listen to city residents."
The city has allocated 645 billion won this year for social welfare policies, accounting for 32.4 percent of its entire annual budget.
Apart from social welfare policies, the city has emphasized increasing sustainability. A suburban city with a rising popularity, Yongin faces unscrupulous urban development projects that are destroying the environment.
The rising population also increases demand on transport, sewage networks, waste management, parks and recreational spaces.
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