- The South Korean government terminated the “AI Digital Textbook Promotion Plan” just four months after implementation, following the chaos the program caused in schools.
- The project, launched in March 2025 with 76 AI-generated textbooks in partnership with the Ministry of Education and 12 major publishers, was once touted by former President Yoon Suk Yeol as a “digital learning revolution.”
- The government invested $850 million, and publishers contributed an additional $567 million to produce and deploy the books across 4,095 schools nationwide.
- The initial goals were: to personalize learning in Math, English, and Programming, while simultaneously reducing teacher workload and limiting student dropout rates.
- However, upon implementation, the AI textbooks were plagued with serious flaws — from content errors and technical glitches to difficult-to-use interfaces. One student shared: “All the lessons were postponed due to technical errors, and we didn’t know how to use them.”
- A Math teacher said: “The quality was terrible, clearly rushed.” Some publishers even delivered the books late, despite the goal being “quick creation using AI.”
- Following a strong wave of protests, the Ministry of Education was forced to retract the mandatory regulation, turning the program into a voluntary trial for one school year.
- By October 2025, after just four months of use, more than half of the schools (≈2,000 schools) had withdrawn from the program. The AI textbooks were downgraded to “supplementary material,” with mandatory use removed.
- Publishers suffered heavy losses, forming the “AI Textbook Emergency Response Committee,” and filing a constitutional petition demanding the government reverse its decision, arguing the cancellation “threatens their existence.”
- The incident highlights the consequences of hastily applying AI in education when the technology has not been fully tested and evaluated in real classroom settings.
📌 Summary: The South Korean government terminated the “AI Digital Textbook Promotion Plan” just four months after implementation, following the chaos the program caused in schools. The government invested $850 million, and publishers contributed an additional $567 million to produce and deploy the books across 4,095 schools nationwide. However, the AI textbooks were plagued with serious flaws upon teaching. The program ended in failure: over 50% of schools withdrew, thousands of technical errors occurred, and teachers and students were exhausted. The incident highlights the consequences of hastily applying AI in education.
