Gyeonggi launches Korea’s first teacher protection corps

Gyeonggi's education office is rolling out Korea's first-ever dedicated corps of officers tasked with protecting teachers from false child abuse accusations and harassment, three years after a young teacher's death ignited a nationwide reckoning over teachers' rights.

The Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education held an inaugural ceremony for its new teachers' rights protection officers on Saturday at the Jowon Government Complex in Suwon, Gyeonggi. The initiative consolidates teacher-protection functions that had previously been handled piecemeal across different departments, giving teachers a single point of contact for support. 

Korean schools have long grappled with a crisis over teachers' rights, one that came to a head in 2023 when a young teacher at Seoul's Seoi Elementary School died following a barrage of complaints from a student's parent over a routine disciplinary measure after she separated two students when one scratched the other's forehead with a pencil. Colleagues later said the parent's complaints escalated over the following weeks, and that she had grown increasingly isolated and anxious under the pressure in the lead-up to her death.

The hit Netflix series "Teach You a Lesson," which premiered in June, had also dealt with the issue of a lack of teachers' rights in Korea. 

A three-year survey conducted by the Gyeonggi office found that high-risk complaints against teachers remain widespread: 26.8 percent involved students refusing to follow classroom guidance, 22.2 percent involved insults or defamation, and 14.3 percent involved injury or assault. Eighty percent of teachers in the survey said they sought psychological counseling due to such issues. 

In the new provincial system, 300 officers have been chosen from teachers, local residents and professionals. They will work alongside lawyers and counselors to provide one-on-one support to teachers facing false child abuse reports, serious rights violations or malicious complaints, following each case from initial report through closure and follow-up, the Gyeonggi office said.

"I made this decision thinking of the teachers who tragically passed away, unable to endure malicious complaints," the province's Superintendent Ahn Min-seok said at the ceremony. "Gyeonggi's dedicated teachers' rights protection officer system — Korea's first — will become the new standard for protecting teachers' rights nationwide.

"Today, I declare an all-out war against malicious complaints. Teachers, just teach — we will protect you."

BY LEE JIAN [[email protected]]