How a teacher’s suicide scandalized South Korea’s child protection law. Abbreviation dug through the Great Wall of China: two people arrested

On June 5, a 23-year-old Korean teacher wrote in her diary that her body felt fear when she entered the classroom.

On July 3, she wrote that she was so overwhelmed with the hustle and bustle of her job that she wanted to “let go.”

Two weeks later, the young woman is found dead in the classroom closet by her colleagues. She has taken her own life.

The problematic child protection law

The case caused a stir and sparked new discussions about a well-known problem: bullying. Not only the Korean school children are affected, but also the teachers. The latter are particularly affected by a child protection law passed in 2014. making it virtually impossible for them to take action against disobedient children. The guidelines of the law are so vague that many parents and students use them to accuse teachers of abuse.

For example, harmless acts, such as the teacher not smiling enough, would have led to complaints of child abuse, reports The Diplomat, citing the Korean daily “Chosun Ilbo”. If a teacher restrains a child’s limbs because he or she wants to use weapons against classmates or throw objects at them, this leads to complaints of physical abuse.

An analysis by the Korean Teachers and Education Union last year found that most reports of child abuse related to “emotional abuse”: 61 percent. The union also conducted a survey of 6,243 teachers. 60 percent of them indicate that they have personally reported child abuse, or know another teacher to whom this has happened. According to the survey, 9 in 10 teachers (92.9 percent) feared being suspected of child abuse and being reported.

For example, students repeatedly threaten to report teachers if they feel hurt by warnings about wrong behaviour. In addition, according to some of the teachers interviewed, the principle of the presumption of innocence was not observed. As a result, teachers are sometimes suspended without any reports of child abuse being checked at all.

All this creates a climate of fear in which the teachers hardly dare to say anything to the children. And this at a time when bullying among school children seems to be escalating.

Schools fight bullying

Government figures show that the number of incidents of violence and bullying in schools has increased sharply over the past decade, reports The Guardian. Keumjoo Kwak, a professor of psychology at Seoul National University, told the British daily that these cases occur ‘reflect the dynamics of collectivist society’, in which peer pressure ‘plays an important role in shaping behavior’. Schoolchildren are under extreme academic pressure, with everything focused on college entrance exams. This creates a very “competitive, hierarchical and monotonous environment” in which there is a lack of physical activity. As a result, many schoolchildren bullied others for fun or to relieve pressure.

The government has been aware of the bullying problem for some time. In an effort to nip the problem in the bud, the country adopted stricter measures in April, according to The Korea Herald: Bullying records of schoolchildren should be taken into account in future applications for university places. Because changes to the admission criteria at universities must be announced two years in advance, the new measure will not take effect until 2026. At the same time, the retention period for bullying records has been extended from two to four years.

Although this measure also calmed the situation for the teachers, it sometimes led to the opposite: some parents are concerned about their children’s future and are now pressuring the teachers to erase notes in the bullying files or not to take notes at all. .

Teachers strike and protest

The suicide of the young teacher is the final straw. Protests have erupted every weekend in South Korea since her case was announced. More than 200,000 teachers took part in a demonstration near the South Korean parliament last Saturday.

On Monday, an estimated 50,000 teachers went a step further and went on strike to commemorate the late teacher. This is despite Education Minister Lee Ju-ho describing the planned action as illegal more than a week in advance and threatening legal repercussions, the South Korean news agency reported.

A day before the strike, however, he softened his tone and acknowledged shortcomings in the school system:

He promised improvement: