Clicked Elementary School Learning Link Leads to Adult Site... Exposed for 2 Weeks

Parents "Need to Identify Cause and Prevent Recurrence"

According to a report by Yonhap News on the 21st, a controversy has arisen after parents discovered that the link to an internet English learning site on the homepage of an elementary school in Jeonbuk was connected to an adult site.

According to parent A, for some reason, clicking the English learning site link on the school's homepage led to an adult site.

Photo by Yonhap News

This issue was confirmed to have persisted from the 7th to the afternoon of the 20th, and it is unknown how many students accessed the problematic site.

The problematic link was located in a section called "Baeumbang" under the "Children's Yard" tab, which was originally supposed to connect to sites where students could learn English, software, artificial intelligence (AI), and more.

The problematic link has since been removed from the school's homepage.

The cause of this situation is known to be that the company providing the learning materials to the school went bankrupt, and the domain was taken over by an adult content provider, but the education authorities were unaware and neglected the issue.

In particular, there is a high possibility that other schools that received these learning materials also experienced similar issues, making investigation and prompt action necessary.

A said, "It is a serious problem that the learning link children access leads to an adult site," adding, "I don't know if the error has been fixed, but not only should the error be corrected, the cause of this incident and measures to prevent recurrence must be established."

A Jeonbuk Office of Education official said, "The problematic related link has been temporarily addressed," and "The school is investigating the cause of the error."

This is not the first incident of a school homepage being improperly managed.

Last month, at a high school in Jeonju, Jeonbuk, the second-year internal grades of third-year students were leaked. An Excel file for third-year class assignments and a file with second-year internal grades were posted. The post was deleted only after dozens of people had already downloaded the files.