The government on Tuesday vowed to step up safety measures for female teachers working in remote areas amid public uproar over the recent rape case of a teacher by students’ parents.
The Education Ministry said it would conduct an overall safety check of the residences of female teachers working in isolated regions by Friday and draw up measures to boost their safety. This includes checking surveillance cameras, emergency bells, protective windows and other security systems
Education Minister Lee Jun-sik (center) attends a Cabinet meeting in Sejong on Tuesday. Yonhap
The move comes after a teacher in her 20s was allegedly raped by three men, including two fathers of her students, in an island in South Jeolla Province late last month. The men were all arrested Saturday.
The police said two of them admitted their charges after their DNA was detected, while one of them denied the allegation. The police are currently looking into whether the suspects plotted the crime beforehand.
It was found that there were no surveillance cameras in a radius of 1 kilometer from the teacher’s residence.
Based on the results of the overall safety check, the ministry said it would make sure to install surveillance cameras in all teachers’ residences in remote regions and come up with new measures to improve safety, the authorities said.
“The ministry will draw up safety measures for teachers in remote regions with municipal education offices by this month and provide its full support. It will also make sure to reduce teachers’ anxiety by strengthening the safety system against sexual crimes around schools and residences upon cooperation with the police and the Interior Ministry,” said Kim Dong-won, the deputy minister of the school policy office at the Education Ministry.
As of last year, about 6,500 teachers work in 706 public schools in remote areas, with Gangwon Province having the largest number, followed by South Jeolla Province. Of this number, 46 percent are women, it added.
Increasing the number of surveillance cameras, however is not the fundamental solution to ensuring the safety of female teachers, experts said.
“In the case of remote areas, public sensitivity to sexual crimes can be relatively low. There should be efforts to carry out antisexual crime education in the community and to curb the excessive drinking culture,” said forensic psychology professor Lee Soo-jung from Kyonggi University.
By Lee Hyun-jeong (rene@heraldcorp.com)
