- South Korea's National Assembly revoked the legal status of AI-based digital textbooks, halting the Yoon administration's flagship education reform.
- The bill excludes AI-assisted materials from the official textbook category, cutting financial support and jeopardizing school adoption and publisher investments.
- The move has triggered industry-wide uncertainty, protests from publishers, and concerns over job losses and disruption in digital education progress.
South Korea's National Assembly passed a bill revoking artificial intelligence-based digital textbooks' legal status as official instructional materials, a severe blow to the former Yoon Suk Yeol administration's flagship education reform project.
The amendment constricts the legal definition of textbooks to printed books and electronic books but excludes 'learning support software utilizing intelligent information technology'. This reclassifies AI-assisted textbooks as another form of learning material, but not as official textbooks.
The new classification is effective upon promulgation, technically eliminating the legal and economic basis for applying AI digital textbooks in schools. The amendment, written and passed single-handedly by the government-majority Democratic Party of Korea, is a revised version of the same bill that was enacted into law last year by the Assembly, which was eventually abandoned when it was vetoed by then-Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok, the nation's acting president at the time.
First rolled out as a flagship project of the Yoon government, AI textbooks were intended to offer students custom-designed learning experiences through sophisticated AI algorithms. At least 533.3 billion won ($385 million) was invested in the project last year alone.
The books were first piloted in the first semester of 2025 for English and mathematics courses at elementary grades 3 and 4, and for English, mathematics and computer science courses at secondary and high schools.
Despite the ambitious launch, the program was met with broad criticism from teachers and parents, who lashed out at the government for ramming through the policy without adequate preparation.
The Ministry of Education responded by switching to school-by-school voluntary adoption, following the initial plan of mandating it across the entire country. Today, the rate of AI textbook adoption stands at about 30 percent across schools.
The passage of the bill now denies these schools financial assistance for AI textbook subscription. According to a high school computer science teacher, while some schools managed to obtain subscription budgets for the second semester, future utilization is in question. "Unless the textbooks remain legally qualified, we won't be able to get the necessary fund. It's now practically impossible to use them in class", the teacher explained.
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Publishing is also heading towards a looming crisis. Businesses that heavily invested in developing AI textbooks, hoping the government would make them compulsory, now claim to be on the brink of bankruptcy. A number of companies sued the Education Ministry in April in an administrative action, citing losses due to poor take-up and policy u-turns.
Industry officials sound the alarm that without the legal textbook status, usage levels might decrease further, threatening the estimated 800 billion won worth of total investments poured into AI textbooks. Layoffs and restructuring are now anticipated industrywide.
A worker in her 30s from a major textbook publisher said her department may soon disappear. “Many companies hired researchers and engineers to develop AI textbooks. Now, with education policy changing depending on who holds political power, we risk not only losing our jobs but also degrading the quality of education itself”, she said.
Publishers have been mounting a final, desperate effort to turn back public opinion and policy. It has been fourteen publishing houses taking turns having individual protests in front of the National Assembly and visiting the Democratic Party headquarters calling for reappraisal of the bill.
The Education Ministry has not yet announced a tangible plan for phasing out the AI textbook scheme. A ministry official indicated the ministry would halt the process of reviewing existing textbooks, draft guidelines for schools to avoid disruption during this fall semester, and confer with regional education bureaus to reduce confusion.
