After nine weeks of teachers protesting nationwide, South Korea has finally passed a new law on September 21st, 2023 to better protect schoolteachers and their rights. The Guardian News reports that the protests were sparked by a series of teacher suicides linked to malicious complaints from parents. Jean Mackenzie, the Seoul correspondent on BBC News, elaborates that teachers were frequently harassed by parents who sometimes report them for child abuse to see them removed from their jobs. According to CNN, the suicide of a teacher from the burden of such a high-pressure education system from notorious abuse from parents called up to 200,000 protesters in September 2023. At last, on Thursday, September 21st, 2023 the four bills, collectively known as the “teacher rights restoration bills” passed at the national assembly, representing a significant step towards enhancing the working conditions and protections for educators, reported by The Guardian News. Teachers will no longer be automatically suspended if they are accused of child abuse, and the bill prohibits principals from downplaying or concealing activities that may have violated a teacher’s rights.

It all started with the suicide of a 23-year-old primary school teacher. According to Mackenzie on BBC, on June 5th, 2023 she described in her diary the fear that took over her body as she entered her classroom to teach: “My chest feels too tight. I feel like I’m going to fall somewhere. I don’t even know where I am.” Later, on July 3rd, 2023 she wrote that she had become so overwhelmed by the craziness of work she “wanted to let go.” She took her own life two weeks later, a little over a year after she started teaching. Her cousin told the BBC that teaching had been her childhood dream, following her mother into the profession, and she had adored the kids she taught. 

Parents have been exploiting a child welfare law passed in 2014, which dictates that teachers accused of child abuse are automatically suspended, according to Mackenzie. Teachers in South Korea could get reported and suspended for restraining a violent child. The law in 2014 was passed to ensure the safety of students, as many of the students were severely abused by teachers decades ago. However, the law overpowered the exploitative rights of parents to suspend teachers and failed to protect teachers in the classrooms. South Korea should find ways of effectively protecting both teachers and students by increasing the responsibility of administrative sectors of schools, as they usually ignore the harassment and abuses taking place within classrooms. The new bills address these problems and hopefully will make changes within the education system.

The death of the 23-year-old teacher is not the only suicide incident of teachers in South Korea. Government data shows 100 public school teachers in South Korea – mostly elementary school teachers – killed themselves from January 2018 to June 2023, according to Jessie Yeung, Yoonjung Seo and Gawon Bae on CNN. In a survey by the Korean Teachers and Education Workers’ Union, more than 60% of the 6,243 respondents said they had either personally been reported for child abuse or known another teacher who had, CNN reported. To address this problem, the government introduced a chatbot service – as parents often harassed teachers over text messages – and a set of guidelines in August 2023, according to The Guardian News.

This incident is also a result of systemic problems, failure of measures to protect the basic rights of students and teachers, and deep-rooted systemic pressures in South Korea. Mackenzie points out that South Korea’s hyper-competitive society is partly to blame for the culture of harassment by parents, as academic achievement is considered the only form of true success, meaning students and parents will do anything to get the best grades even if that means removing teachers from their post for correctly disciplining their students. South Korea will need to further investigate its school systems and students’ and teachers’ lives to address the broader issues of education and society.