Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Elementary school teacher under fire for inappropriate homework assignment
A captured screen shot of an elementary school teacher who made inappropriate comments to first grade students in his classroom in Ulsan /Yonhap
By Bahk Eun-ji
By Bahk Eun-ji
A male teacher at an elementary school in Ulsan is under fire for using inappropriate language and behavior toward first graders, according to the regional education office Tuesday.
According to the Ulsan Metropolitan Office of Education (UMOE), the teacher, in his 40s, ordered his students recently to wash their underwear and asked their parents to upload pictures of them doing so on an online community where he communicates with them.
The teacher's absurd behavior surfaced when a parent captured screen shots of comments he made on another online community. The screen shots show a number of his inappropriate comments about his students, such as “I fall in love with little princesses with charming smiles, oh yeah,” “I thought there were only beautiful girls in my classroom, but there are handsome boys, too. Tell them I don't like boys that are better-looking than me,” and “There are so many beautiful girls in my classroom. I envy their boyfriends.”
On the pictures parents uploaded of the students washing underwear, he also left comments like “Little princess shyly completed the mission,” “Pretty pajamas, pretty underwear,” and “I like your pink underwear, little princess.”
After the criticism became serious, the teacher issued an apology on the community, claiming that he gave the assignment to increase the students' self-esteem by having them complete a task that would be difficult for them.
“I thought the way parents posted the screenshots is not the proper way to communicate with me. If parents let me know that students are too shy to wash their underwear as homework, I would change it from underwear to socks,” he wrote.
When he posted the apology, parents criticized him even harsher, and a petition was filed with the presidential office website calling for his expulsion from the teaching job. The petition has garnered more than 39,000 signatures as of 3 p.m., Tuesday.
The UMOE said it has reported the teacher to the police for sexual harassment, and the school is currently excluding him from work and considering disciplinary action through its self-audit.