The purpose of this study is to explore tasks for developing early childhood education (ECE) in the public education system by analyzing the current ECE system in South Korea. This study reviewed the Ministry of Education’s “5-year development plan” to analyze the vision and directions of the government’s ECE policy, analyzed the current ECE system based on the analytical framework derived from primary principles and policy domains for public education, and suggested future policy tasks for incorporating ECE into the public education system. The main research results are as follow: First, the government has strived to establish an advanced ECE system under the goals of increasing publicness and national accountability and has pursued improving its quality beyond the increased accessibility of the ECE. Second, Korea has continued to improve the ECE system by increasing the enrollment rate in public kindergarten, providing greater financial subsidies to parents, clarifying the transparency in financial accounting by adopting the “K-edufine” system, introducing the evaluation system, implementing a national (“Nuri”) curriculum, and encouraging collaboration with parents and communities with mandatory parent meetings. Finally, this study suggested four tasks for the government in each short-term and long-term plan based on the “principle-domain” framework for increasing the public nature of ECE.