Education Minister Choi Kyo-jin emphasized that "the Ministry of Education will look more carefully into the matter so that we can take firm action against unreasonable malicious complaints against schools and teachers."
In a Facebook post on Thursday marking Teachers' Day, Choi said, "It is no exaggeration to say that the situation of teachers protecting their classrooms is a continuous crisis."
"We will also actively prepare measures to prevent indiscriminate child abuse reports," Choi said. "We will improve policies and systems so that teachers can be free from liability for incidents that occur during legitimate educational activities." He added, "We will do our best to demonstrate more wisdom and prepare solutions for schools where responsibility and effort toward students are rewarded, and for classrooms where teaching is happy and enjoyable."
Citing the lyrics "A teacher's grace is as high as the sky, growing higher the more we look up" to describe the reality surrounding the decline of teachers' authority, Choi said, "The honest reality of education today is that it is questionable how many people genuinely empathize with this song that we used to sing on Teachers' Day." He stressed, "On Teachers' Day, my concerns and worries about the crisis in teachers' authority are greater than anything, and no matter how much the world changes, the heart of respecting teachers must be preserved to the end."
