Get Schooled — Chapter 247¶
Complete Detailed Panel-by-Panel Transcription¶
Scope¶
This transcription follows the 31 ordered story segments embedded in the supplied Chapter 247 MHT, excluding its separate chapter-header image. Readable legislative summaries, press-conference dialogue, criminal penalties, news reports, and the closing Ministry announcement are preserved where legible.
Content note¶
The chapter contains legal reform, criminal punishment for malicious complaints, discussion of teacher suicides and school-trip accidents, and a proposal to lower the age of criminal responsibility.
Segments 001–005 — Reforming liability for school safety accidents¶
Minister Choi Gang-seok continues the public address.
Under the old system, when a safety accident occurred during a field trip, school excursion, physical-education activity, or similar event, courts could treat the outcome as a breach of an individual teacher’s duty of care.
Even accidents caused by unpredictable circumstances or natural disasters could result in occupational-negligence charges against the supervising teacher.
Teachers’ organizations protested that protection and supervision duties were being interpreted with extreme severity.
Schools responded by canceling field trips rather than risking personal ruin.
Choi says the Ministry determined that legal reform is the only fundamental solution.
The National Assembly passed an amendment to the School Safety Act that morning.
The key principle is that unavoidable accidents during official educational activities must not automatically become the personal criminal liability of an individual teacher.
Segments 006–010 — The state becomes the responsible defendant¶
The amendment establishes a special exemption from ordinary criminal-negligence provisions for safety accidents during school activities.
Unless school staff acted with clear intent or gross negligence, individual teachers will no longer be treated as the criminally responsible party.
Civil claims also change.
A student or guardian seeking damages for a school-safety accident must direct the claim toward the competent superintendent of education, education authority, or School Safety Mutual Aid Association rather than suing the individual staff member who supervised the activity.
The state and responsible local government will bear the legal and financial burden.
Choi compares the reform with protections used in advanced education systems, including the United States’ Paul D. Coverdell Teacher Protection Act.
The goal is not to eliminate safety standards.
It is to prevent teachers from carrying impossible risks created by the institution itself.
Segments 011–014 — National standards for legitimate discipline¶
Choi turns to the second major problem:
MALICIOUS COMPLAINTS
Teachers describe these reports as the single greatest nightmare in modern classrooms.
A parent can interpret a child’s hurt feelings as emotional abuse and immediately place the teacher under police investigation.
The Ministry establishes:
NATIONAL STANDARD DISCIPLINE GUIDELINES
The guidelines define approved procedures for:
- correcting repeated disruption;
- separating students;
- assigning proportional classroom consequences;
- documenting warnings;
- and protecting other children from violence.
When a teacher follows those standards and the education office recognizes the action as legitimate educational discipline, the conduct will be protected from ordinary legal liability.
A child-abuse report based solely on that recognized discipline will not proceed through the full police-investigation stage.
The case will also be added to the guidelines as a precedent, refining future standards.
The rules will be available through Ministry and local education-office websites so that teachers and parents can see them in advance.
Segments 015–018 — Complaint offices and dedicated investigators¶
Choi tells teachers not to be intimidated when carrying out legitimate discipline within the guidelines.
The Ministry will create an integrated complaint-reception office at every school.
Parents will no longer be able to bypass formal channels and contact individual teachers repeatedly at work or through private phones.
If a complaint concerns conduct already recognized in the national discipline standards, the office may decline it immediately.
Each local education authority will establish dedicated investigators for malicious complaints.
These investigators will screen indirect pressure as soon as it arrives.
When a complainant attempts to mobilize police, education offices, petition websites, or media solely to pressure a teacher, the investigator may file a criminal complaint against the malicious complainant.
Segments 019–023 — The Special Act defines prohibited conduct¶
Choi states that the National Assembly passed:
THE SPECIAL ACT ON AGGRAVATED PUNISHMENT FOR MALICIOUS COMPLAINTS AND INFRINGEMENT OF EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES
The visible definitions include conduct such as:
- continuously and repeatedly making improper interference in student guidance or educational activities without just cause;
- using abusive language, threats, or insults—or causing mental suffering—to obstruct a teacher’s performance of duties;
- knowingly filing or spreading false accusations concerning educational activities in order to discipline, punish, intimidate, or pressure a teacher.
The Act also requires immediate protection and separation for a victimized teacher.
The teacher may receive psychological treatment and legal support without professional disadvantage.
Choi says malicious complainants previously acted as if no law applied to them.
That era is over.
Segments 024–026 — Criminal penalties¶
The legislation creates direct penalties.
A person who obstructs a teacher’s work through covered malicious conduct may face imprisonment or a substantial fine.
The displayed provisions include penalties reaching roughly:
- up to three years’ imprisonment or ₩30 million for covered obstruction;
- and up to five years’ imprisonment or ₩50 million for false accusations regarding educational activities.
Han Sunyeong, still handcuffed, says the law infringes a parent’s right to participate in a child’s education and returns the country to an era when teachers possessed absolute power.
Choi rejects that characterization.
The purpose is not to eliminate complaints or parental participation.
It is to prevent malicious campaigns from overrunning classrooms.
TEACHERS, PLEASE STAND BEFORE YOUR CLASSROOMS WITH PEACE OF MIND NOW.
Segments 027–029 — Immediate public effects¶
Education-sector organizations welcome the measures together.
Schools that canceled field trips because of personal-liability fears announce that they will resume normal schedules.
A teacher who lost her position after a field-trip accident, served probation, and spent years in legal battles receives a presidential special pardon and reinstatement.
She returns to school carrying flowers while students and colleagues applaud.
Commentators describe the case as a turning point in recognizing the difference between unavoidable accidents and individual criminal negligence.
The TRPA team watches the news.
Malicious complaints that once arrived three or four times every day have not appeared during the previous week.
Sera becomes emotional watching a teacher return to the classroom.
The team agrees the reforms are a genuine positive change.
Segment 030 — The agency is not becoming unnecessary¶
One inspector jokes that if the reforms reduce reports this dramatically, perhaps the TRPA will lose its reason to exist.
Na says that is wishful thinking.
The agency still has enormous piles of unresolved school-violence reports.
Reforming complaint systems does not eliminate bullying, organized youth crime, family abuse, or the cases already waiting.
The team returns to work.
Sera appears to have turned off or mishandled someone’s computer while celebrating, prompting another small argument in the office.
The moment restores the ordinary team dynamic after the national policy announcement.
Segment 031 — A new national debate begins¶
The broadcast changes to the Ministry of Justice.
A senior justice official announces a surprise proposal.
In response to increasingly violent and calculated juvenile crime, the Ministry will seek to lower the age below which juvenile offenders are exempt from criminal penalties.
The current threshold is fourteen.
The proposed new threshold is:
THIRTEEN YEARS OLD
The official frames the amendment as a response to public demand for stronger consequences and youths who deliberately exploit age-based protection.
The chapter ends by moving from teacher protection to the next disputed question:
How young should a child be before the criminal law treats them as fully responsible?
Chapter-level continuity notes¶
The School Safety Act addresses structural risk¶
The reform shifts institutional liability away from individual teachers while preserving responsibility for intent or gross negligence.
Discipline protection depends on compliance with published standards¶
The chapter does not grant teachers unlimited immunity. Protection attaches to documented procedures recognized by education authorities.
Complaints remain possible¶
The new system targets repetition, harassment, false accusations, and pressure campaigns—not ordinary disagreement or good-faith reporting.
Han Sunyeong becomes the first symbolic case¶
Her arrest demonstrates that the new law has an enforcement mechanism rather than only another educational requirement she can ignore.
The reforms visibly reduce one portion of the TRPA’s workload¶
They do not solve the large backlog of direct violence and youth-crime cases.
The final proposal opens a new conflict between punishment and development¶
Lowering the criminal-responsibility age continues the series’ debate over whether children require harsher consequences, rehabilitation, or both.