Teacher Safety Crisis: Why Student Assaults Aren’t Recorded and What It Means for Education

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Teachers’ groups criticized a recent incident at a middle school in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, where a student assaulted a female teacher during class. They warned that “even if a student hits a teacher, it doesn’t leave a record in the student file,” and called for urgent, structural measures to prevent repeated assaults on educators.

The Korea Federation of Teachers’ Associations (KFTA) and the Gyeonggi Teachers’ Association said in a statement on the 8th that a teacher was again injured by a student’s assault during class as the new school term began.

They added that it is particularly troubling that society, the government, and lawmakers appear to have grown numb to frequent violations of teachers’ rights. “How can we pursue quality education and meaningful reform when teachers face assaults from students?” they asked.

KFTA Chair Kang Ju-ho said teachers who are injured or assaulted by their students must continue teaching while coping with lifelong trauma, and stressed that serious injury and assault—offenses that qualify as major crimes under criminal law—must not be treated lightly.

Kang pointed out that while incidents of student-on-student violence are recorded in student files and can affect college admissions, students who assault teachers and are transferred or expelled leave no record in their files. “This is a clear form of reverse discrimination and sends the wrong message to students and parents—that you can hit a teacher and it won’t show up on your record,” he said.

Lee Sang-ho, chair of the Gyeonggi Teachers’ Association, warned that students’ right to education cannot be guaranteed in unsafe classrooms and that piecemeal responses after each incident are insufficient. He urged the government and the National Assembly to remember that restoring teachers’ authority is a basic prerequisite for normalizing public education, and called for immediate, stronger legal measures, including recording serious violations of teachers’ rights in student files.

According to the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education, on the 31st of last month a second-year male student identified as A assaulted a female teacher during class at a middle school in Gwangju, Gyeonggi. The teacher was injured and taken to the emergency room.