The government announced on Wednesday it will strengthen the monitoring of international schools for Koreans, following a string of admission scams involving several conglomerate and elite families.

This month, local authorities will conduct on-the-spot checks on all 51 foreign schools focusing on the admission process and students’ nationality, according to the Ministry of Education and Science and Technology.

Under the current law, only children with a parent with foreign citizenship or who have lived overseas for more than three years are entitled to attend the schools.

But it is believed that many parents have bought forged documents to enroll their unqualified children.

Affluent parents opt for foreign schools as an alternative to sending their children to study abroad.

The Education Ministry announced Wednesday that some students may be forced to leave their school if they are found to have registered with forged documents.

The ministry is also set to introduce guidelines to strengthen the admission process, requiring schools to include a face-to-face interview and students to submit certificates to prove more than three years of residence abroad.

The authorities will also check the number of Korean nationals in the schools. The regulation requires foreign schools to maintain a quota of Koreans at a maximum of 30 percent of the total students.

However, recent data from Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education showed that five of 22 schools in the city have more Korean nationals than foreign nationals.

The schools will now be required to regularly report the ratio of Korean and non-Korean students and the number of nationalities by each country, the ministry announced.

The announcement came amid an investigation that started last month into allegations of admission irregularities at foreign schools.

Prosecutors believe some 100 parents, including a relative of Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik and families of the country’s top conglomerates, bought forged documents from brokers to meet the requirements for enrolling their children in foreign schools.

So far prosecutors have raided at least seven foreign schools in Seoul and Incheon, and three brokers are now in custody in connection with the case.

By Oh Kyu-wook (596story@heraldcorp.com)