When fighting broke out in Kang Hyeon-joo’s elementary school classroom, her heart would beat so fast she could not breathe and her vision would blur.
“They were throwing punches and kicking faces, throwing chairs and tables around,” she recalled, adding she had been hurt trying to intervene.
Government data shows 100 public school teachers killed themselves from January 2018 to June 2023, 11 of them in the first six months of this year, but does not specify what factors contributed to their deaths. Ahn says parents have called her mobile phone some days from 6 a.m. until 11 p.m., wanting to talk about their child or complain.South Korea’s education minister Lee Ju-ho initially warned teachers that a mass strike would be an illegal act. That position was swiftly reversed, and a set of legal revisions passed the National Assembly on September 21, a fast piece of legislation.
In the past, Ahn said, “If I could not give my personal phone number to them, sometimes some parents would come to the parking lot and watch and see and take a note of my phone number from my car, then they would text message me.” It is customary for Koreans to display their phone number in the bottom corner of their windscreen.