Teachers and students’ perceptions of Korea’s emergency online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic

The outbreak of COVID-19 happened suddenly. Consequently, educators were forced to provide online teaching during the 2020 school year. In Korea, from the elementary school to the graduate school level, the educational system became virtual at the beginning of March (S. Korea to begin new school year, 2020). During February 2020, the Korean educational body announced an emergency for the spring semester, and it later decided to go fully online for three months (S. Korea to begin new school year, 2020). According to Kim (2020), approximately 5.4 million primary and secondary students in Korea and 3 million college students were forced to attend school through online systems in 2020. This caused several issues. First, teachers were not prepared to film themselves or change face-to-face class presentations into online videos (Ock, 2020a). Web applications, such as Zoom or Google Meet, provided teachers with an alternative way to communicate with their students simultaneously. However, this did not solve the issues that many teachers faced. Teachers had to learn how to use computers, web applications, communicative apps, and digital devices to interact with their students during the pandemic. Students had to learn how to access the online materials, use digital devices, and secure strong internet connections (Lee & Kim, 2020; Ock, 2020b). Moreover, attending school online prohibited college freshmen and first graders from making new friends or getting accustomed to the educational system. These challenges have widened the educational gap between the students that had previously learned in a traditional classroom and those that had to learn online during the pandemic. Thus, the educational body of Korea and students face the issue of “catching up” with academic achievements (Shin, 2021; Yoon, 2020). Development of computer technology has provided teachers and students with the skills and devices they need to work online (Atkins, 2018). In Korea, the current trend in education focuses heavily on social networking services,