The funeral home of Kim Ha-neul (8), a victim of the Daejeon Elementary School murder case, is set up at a funeral home in Daejeon. (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
SEOUL, Feb. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — The killing of an 8-year-old girl by a teacher at an elementary school in Daejeon, South Korea, has intensified calls for expanding closed-circuit television coverage to include classrooms, which are currently exempt from surveillance.
According to the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, the city’s 603 elementary schools were equipped with 15,413 CCTV cameras as of September of last year. However, these cameras monitor only entrances and hallways, leaving classroom interiors unwatched.
The school where the first-grader, identified as Kim Ha-neul, was killed had no cameras in the second-floor hallway, after-school care room, or audio-visual room where her body was discovered. Police, responding to a missing person report at 5:15 p.m. on February 10, searched the school but initially failed to locate her. She was found with stab wounds in the audio-visual room at approximately 5:50 p.m.
“How can we trust our children’s safety at school when a teacher commits such an act?” said a parent of a second-grader, who identified herself only by her surname Song. “Life should take precedence over privacy rights. We need cameras in classrooms to prevent such horrific incidents from happening again,” she said, fighting back tears.
However, significant opposition to expanded surveillance exists, with critics citing concerns about teachers’ instructional rights, student privacy, and potential data breaches.
The Seoul education office previously considered installing classroom cameras in 2012, but the plan was abandoned following opposition from civic groups and the National Human Rights Commission of Korea. The commission ruled that constant surveillance would infringe on basic rights, including personal imagery rights, privacy, students’ freedom of behavior, and freedom of expression.
“Installing CCTV without consent from students and teachers arbitrarily grants others the right to observe private spaces,” said Lee Han-seop, a spokesman for the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union. “We must carefully consider whether crime prevention justifies such invasion of individual rights.”
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
