It’s been one hectic and nerve-wrecking morning for Hwang Jin-ah.

Four of her family ― Hwang with her 3-year-old daughter, husband, and her 71-year-old mother ― were mobilized to take part in three lotteries on Wednesday morning, taking place at different locations between 9:30 and 10:30 a.m. 

They briefed each other through cell phones about the size of the crowd gathered and how the draw was processing.

“Thankfully, my husband picked the lucky number in a draw that he attended. We are so relieved that this is now over,” she said. “Our kid has a kindergarten to go next year.”

Her family’s special operation that day was not about nabbing a much-coveted spot in the nation’s best private educational institutions.

Rather, it was the standard procedure in Seoul for any family with kindergarten-bound children.

Across the capital, thousands of parents underwent a similar nail-biting process Wednesday, as most of the city’s 700 private-run kindergartens held a lottery to select new enrollees.

Next Tuesday, 157 public kindergartens will determine theirs again by lots. Institutions in Gyeonggi Province, which surrounds Seoul, held lotteries last Saturday.

The lottery system has been introduced for public kindergartens by the Education Ministry this year in a bid to relieve parents of the toil of camping out on the eve of the registration day to secure a spot in the kindergarten of their choice. Private kindergartens chose to use the same system for their admission process.

Parents, however, are far from happy. In fact, they are calling this year’s process “the kindergarten wars.”

“Who invented this policy? What are we (working moms) supposed to do if our kids are the unlucky ones? Quit our job or bring kids to work?” said Park Jin-hwi, a working mom, wrote on a message posted on the bulletin board of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education.

Similar messages complaining about the system inundated online communities of working moms.

“I am giving up. We tried five kindergartens, but had no luck,” one wrote in an online cafe of moms living in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province. “The government tells us to have more kids, but look what the reality of Korea is for parents.”

Some complained the first-come, first-served basis registration was better than a lucky draw, over which parents have no control.

“Last year, parents could get their kids into kindergartens if they really tried, but this year, it is all up to luck,” another message read.

Experts say the problem is not the admission process itself. There is a fundamental mismatch in supply and demand in kindergarten education, they point out.

The number of kindergarten-bound children aged 3 to 5 next year is 1.4 million, but kindergartens can accept only 610,000. Daycare centers can accommodate another 620,000.

In Seoul, public kindergartens account for only 18 percent of all institutions. Yet, officials say it is difficult to drastically increase the supply due to budget restraints.

As criticism mounted, the ministry said it plans to ask the Fair Trade Commission to look into private kindergartens that colluded to select applicants on the same hour on the same day for a breach of fair trade rules.

Yim Jang-hyuk, secretary general of the Korea Kindergarten Association, said, the measure was aimed at preventing excessive competition at a few famous kindergartens.

“Parents, feeling anxious about their luck in the lottery system, applied for a number of institutions, which resulted in inflated competition,” he said.

By Lee Sun-young  (milaya@heraldcorp.com)