<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">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."</span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On 3 July the primary school teacher wrote that she had become so overwhelmed by the craziness of work she "wanted to let go".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Two weeks later, the 23-year-old was found dead in her classroom store cupboard by her colleagues. She had taken her own life.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This tragedy has unleashed a wave of anger from primary school teachers across South Korea, who have started to share their experiences of being bullied by overbearing parents and unruly children. Tens of thousands of them have gone on strike to demand better protection at work.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">They say parents frequently push them to breaking point, by calling their personal phones every hour of the day and weekends, incessantly and unfairly complaining.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Some of the complaints have an especially sinister edge. 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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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 and intervene as they attack each other.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At one protest, 28-year old teacher Kim Jin-seo said that she had experienced suicidal thoughts, and needed three months off work, following two particularly aggressive complaints. In one case she had asked a disruptive pupil to take five minutes to gather their thoughts in the toilet, while in the other she had reported a child to his parents for fighting. In both instances, the school forced her to apologise.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kim said she reached the point where she did not feel she could safely teach her class: "We teachers feel extremely disempowered. Those who have had experienced this first-hand are fundamentally changed, and those who haven't, have seen it happen to others, so either way it is debilitating."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Fuelling this culture of complaining is South Korea's hyper-competitive society, where almost everything hinges on academic success. Students compete fiercely for the best grades from a very young age, to one day get into the best universities. Outside school, parents send their children to study at expensive extra-curriculum schools known as hagwons, which operate from 5am to 10pm. Whereas families in Korea used to have five or six children, now most have just one, meaning they have just one shot at success. BBC</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">bnbd24/kh</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div>