KTU Members Sentenced Guilty

The court found guilty 6 former officials of the Korea Teachers and Education Workers Union (KTU). The court ruled that if students’ rights for studying and learning were violated by teachers’ collective move to take leave, that constituted the obstruct of school administration. This ruling draws much attention as the teachers’ union is to collectively take one-day leave this weekend to participate in the demonstration protesting against the launch of NEIS or the National Education Information System.

The Seoul District Court sentenced Lee Su-ho, the former head of the Korea Teachers’ and Education Worker’s Union, 1 year in prison with the 2 year suspension of the execution Thursday for waging illegal demonstration with teachers. The vice chief of the union Kim Eun-hyeong and the head of Seoul branch Kim Jae-seok were sentenced 10 months in prison for leading teachers to take leave from their schools. 3 high ranking union officials were sentenced suspended 10 months in prison.

“The related law forbids KTU to be engaged in any strikes. But the union ignored such rules and procedures and went on a strike, which caused many problems including the violation of students` rights to study and learn. This kind of violation of law should be subject to punishment,” said the court in its verdict.

The court also ruled that “teachers certainly have legal rights to take leave. But teachers, in this case, collectively took leave to participate in the strike. This certainly constitutes obstruct of school administration and violation of the law on KTU, which forbids teachers` strike.”

KTU said, “We will seek an appeal of the case as taking leave is the legitimate rights given to teachers.”

The former head of the union Lee Su-ho and others were prosecuted without detention for waging illegal demonstration October 2001 for the normalization of public education and the revision of the law on private schools with 7000 teachers who took leave and came to Seoul for the protest. He was also charged for holding an illegal protest on streets and roads from November 14th to 17th.

Tae-Hoon Lee jefflee@donga.com