Elementary School Teacher Who Made Another Student Hit Someone Because of "Hit Them" Complaints

1 Year Imprisonment with 2 Years Probation

An elementary school teacher who made classmates beat a student for talking during class was sentenced to prison again in the appellate court.

The Daejeon District Court Criminal Appeals Division 2 (Chief Judge Choi Hyung-cheol) sentenced A (60), who was indicted for violating the Special Act on the Punishment of Child Abuse Crimes, to one year in prison with a two-year probation, Yonhap News reported on the 7th. He was also ordered to attend 40 hours each of recidivism prevention lectures on child abuse and safe driving lectures.

Photo by Yonhap News

A, a teacher at an elementary school in Chungnam, was put on trial for making B, a 4th-grade student in his class who was talking during class on January 7, 2020, lie face down on the classroom floor and then having 15 classmates hit the student’s back.

On the same day, he verbally abused C, who took his own towel to wipe water spilled by friends on a chair, and hit him on the head with a xylophone mallet. In July 2019, he also physically and emotionally abused students by hitting D on the back of the head for entering the wrong password for an online learning program.

Separately, A was acquitted in the first trial for causing an accident while driving with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.03% on September 4, 2020, injuring four people (violation of the Special Act on Traffic Accident Handling), based on his claim that the blood alcohol test was conducted without rinsing his mouth. However, in the appellate court, he was found guilty on this charge as well, resulting in a harsher sentence.

The first trial court had previously sentenced him to eight months in prison with a two-year probation. However, the appellate court stated, "Despite the considerable physical and emotional harm caused to the child victims by the defendant’s abuse, the defendant showed dissatisfaction with the victims’ reports," adding, "However, some consideration was given to the fact that there appeared to be a certain degree of disciplinary intent."