Korean Parents Have A Canadian English Teacher Arrested For Showing A BBC Video In Class

On January 12, 2020, the Korean police began investigating an English instructor from Canada — after concerned parents reported her for child abuse.

At the private English academy, where she was put in charge of a small group of 6-to-7-year-old students, the instructor played a video called “What Does Human Flesh Taste Like?” from BBC’s YouTube channel.

As captured from the academy’s surveillance camera footage, the students react with distress as the video begins to play on the screen.

When the seven students who attended this class went home and told their parents about how they watched a video of “a man eating a piece of himself”, parents grew outraged and asked the academy’s administration to explain.

Once the academy verified that the instructor had in fact shown the BBC video to the students, the parents reported the instructor to the police for child abuse. The parents added in the news interview that this particular instructor has been problematic for her insensitivity…

She once told my child that she doesn’t want to get married because when she has a baby, she needs to have her belly cut open and that is going to hurt a lot. It traumatized my child…

— Parent

… and that her classes have had a negative impact on their children’s behaviors.

I once spotted my child washing a stuffed animal and saying that it needs to be broiled in hot water to be eaten.

— Parent

The police made an immediate arrest of the said instructor but has moved on to investigating without detaining her. Authorities have shared that during the investigation, the instructor explained that she only played the video for the students because they asked if it would be possible to eat human flesh. Parents remain appalled at the fact that the instructor “didn’t seem to think it was a big deal,” according to the police.

This case has sparked a debate online among Korean netizens who believe the instructor was way over the line to traumatize young children with such a controversial video and others who argue that an arrest for showing an educational BBC video may have been extreme.

For your reference, here is the full BBC video the children watched in class. Warning, the content can be graphic: