About the South Korean Elementary-school Teacher's Suicide Incident

Recently, in South Korea, an incident of an elementary-school teacher’s suicide has stirred the public into enrage. The teacher, who was in charge of solving the school violence incident, had been “roasted” by verbal harassment and threat from the parents. Moreover, the parents have been continuously and forcibly agitating and stressing the teacher by, for instance, requiring her to record and report when and where their children leave the classroom or calling her through her self-phone even after the work hour.

Though this incident marked a critical blow to the controversy about the fall of South Korea’s educational authority, outrageous disrespect and violation of human rights have been prevailing throughout the school. The impertinent parents communicate in groups to “control” the teachers, and their increasingly absurd requirements are reducing the teachers as babysitters. In recent years, teachers are unwilling to wake a student sleeping in their class because there have been cases where the teachers were sued for “sexual harassment” after waking students up. The teachers are even sued for making students write a letter of apology. Moreover, the impertinent parent groups are violating the rights and privacy of teachers by calling them at any time they want (even at 1:00 AM in the morning), spreading their photos and judging their faces, sending messages of threats, or forcing them to kneel or apologize for every single thing the parents are unpleasant about. Now the children, who grew up watching their parents, are starting to perceive their teachers as under them.

Not only are teachers the target of such unfair treatment and undermining; but numerous ‘inferior”—as some shameless people consider—employees suffer the same distress. Janitors and wardens, for instance, are sometimes required not to turn on the air conditioner in their office even during the hottest summer or go off resting and traveling by the apartment residents. As such, ignorant and selfish people’s disregard for others is causing inflammation in society. People increasingly overlook respect for others, driving society further away from being bearable; then, they pass rubbishes as an inheritance to their children by showing such vices in action. From when did we lose where we are going? From when was regarding others and acting with respect and sensibility so hard to find?

We say that we live in a democratic nation. However, it seems evident that we are never attaining a true democracy unless we bring it into our life. We speak of our proud history of the uprising for democracy but then turn our back and treat others as our slaves. The foundation of a democratic nation, which lies in mutual respect for each other’s rights, is only memorized but not put into our action. We would not be able to even think of establishing ethics or morality, the higher values, when even the constitutional requirements about mutual respect are entirely ignored.