On 5 June, Lee Min-so* described in her diary the fear that overtook 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.”
On 3 July the primary school teacher wrote that she had become so overwhelmed by the craziness of work she “wanted to let go”.
Two weeks later, the 23-year-old was found dead in her classroom store cupboard by her colleagues. She had taken her own life.
This tragedy has unleashed a wave of anger from primary school teachers across South Korea.
Tens of thousands of them went on strike on Monday to demand better protection at work. They say they’re frequently harassed by overbearing parents, who call them all hours of the day and weekends, incessantly and unfairly complaining.
Min-so’s cousin, Park Du-yong, struggles not to cry as he straightens out her small, empty apartment, now home to just her goldfish. Her bed is unmade, and beside it sits a pile of drawings from her first-grade students, telling her how much they loved her. Underneath is a stack of library books on how to cope with depression.
Park says his cousin had been teaching for little over a year, fulfilling her childhood dream by following her mother into the profession. She had adored the kids, he says.
So in the days after his cousin’s death, which police quickly pinned on a recent breakup, Park assumed the role of detective. He unearthed hundreds of diary entries, work logs and text messages.
They revealed that in the months leading up to her suicide, Min-so had been bombarded by complaints from parents. Most recently, one of her pupils had slashed another child’s head with a pencil, and she’d been embroiled in heated late phone calls and messages with the parents.
For the past six weeks, tens of thousands of teachers have rallied in Seoul, claiming they are now so scared of being called child abusers, they are unable to discipline their students or intervene as they attack each other.
They accuse parents of exploiting a child welfare law, passed in 2014, which dictates that teachers who are accused of child abuse are automatically suspended.
Teachers can be reported for child abuse for restraining a violent child, while a telling off is frequently labelled as emotional abuse. Such accusations can see teachers immediately removed from their jobs.
One teacher received a complaint after denying a parent’s request to wake their child up with a phone call each morning. Another was reported for emotional abuse after taking reward stickers off a boy who had cut his classmate with scissors.