High School Teacher Dismissed Over Allegations of Group Sexual Assault During High School Years

Requested dismissal in mid-month... Effective from the 30th
Claims "Not true... It's unfair" in school investigation

A teacher who was suspected of participating in a group sexual assault during high school and is currently working as a homeroom teacher at an elementary school in Gyeonggi Province has been dismissed.

According to a Yonhap News report on the 25th, the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education announced that it made the decision to dismiss Teacher A the day before. The dismissal will take effect on the 30th of this month. It is known that Teacher A had already applied for dismissal in mid-June after suspicions about them surfaced on internet cafes and other platforms. After the issue was reported in the media, Teacher A took sick leave and has not returned to school, so there will be no further contact with students.

Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education Gwanggyo Building
[Image source=Yonhap News]

The school where Teacher A was employed sent a text message to parents the day before to inform them of the dismissal. The principal of the school stated, "After investigating the person involved in the allegations, they responded that 'it is not true, I am innocent, and I have no involvement.' However, as soon as the suspicions were raised, the teacher was excluded from student classes and educational activities, and with the cooperation of the education authorities, the dismissal was processed." The principal added, "This matter is serious for student education and has significant social repercussions, so the school task force and education authorities could not disclose the measures taken in real time. We deeply apologize. Since teaching is a profession that requires ethical awareness and morality, we hope that social and institutional improvements will be made to ensure thorough verification before appointment in the future."

Earlier, on the 20th, a post titled "A mentally disabled minor group rapist becoming an elementary school teacher and firefighter is a crazy event" was uploaded on an online community. The incident mentioned in the post refers to a case in 2010 where 16 high school students in the Daejeon area repeatedly sexually assaulted a female middle school student with level 3 intellectual disability, whom they met through internet chatting, over the course of about a month. The perpetrators were sent to juvenile court under the Juvenile Act and received protective measures.

Protective measures are not criminal punishments, so they do not remain as a criminal record and are not recorded in criminal history data, thus not hindering holding public office such as teaching. In the case of school staff, they undergo an annual sex crime background check under the Act on the Protection of Children and Youth Against Sexual Abuse, but this system also has a loophole in that it cannot detect protective measures.

The author of the post introduced themselves as "an acquaintance of the perpetrators of the 'Daejeon intellectually disabled female middle school student group sexual assault case' that shocked South Korea 12 years ago," and revealed, "The perpetrators are living well after being admitted to prestigious universities, and some of them have completely erased their identities by working in public offices such as teachers at Gwanggyo 00 Elementary School and firefighters."

After this post was reported in the media and caused a significant social uproar, a Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education official stated, "We will conduct a thorough investigation of the facts and proceed with appropriate legal procedures."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.