Writings and photographs posted on the Internet claimed that a teacher at a high school in Seoul, known only by his family name Lee, had punished a student for participating in a candlelight vigil. Lee became the target of an online witch-hunt. He and his school were inundated with protest calls. Lee, who is a member of the Korean Teachers and Education Workers' Union, had been laid off for 12 years for his liberal ideology. Now he has been asked by the union to give up his membership.

A probe by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education found that the student, known only by his family name Chung, had not been punished for participating in the candlelight vigils. Rather, he was punished because he refused to change his biased view on U.S. beef and challenged his teacher and continued arguing in support of his view, making it impossible to conduct class. Lee had explained to his pupils during a class on international trade that Korea needed to import U.S. beef, considering the commercial realities facing the Asian country and the importance of the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement. Then Chung began arguing with Lee, insisting that his own health could be hurt by eating American beef. Lee explained to the student that the chances of catching the human form of mad cow disease by consuming American beef were one in four billion. But Chung shot back, saying he could be that one in four billion who gets infected. Lee took Chung outside of the classroom and reprimanded him, and hit him twice on the thigh while he knelt in punishment.

The atmosphere in our society is making it impossible for teachers to tell the truth to their students. Those who do are subject to a cyber lynching by a mob with no name. In one interview with news media, Lee said the past few days had felt like years due to the numbers of protest phone calls he had received.

Lee said he regretted punishing Chung. But he did not change his view as a teacher of commerce that he supports U.S. beef imports and opposes radical behavior. Lee told the KTEWU, which demanded his withdrawal for disobeying a directive, that he would not voluntarily do so and asked that he be expelled. Lee had been forced to quit his teaching job back in 1987 for being one of the founding members of a group that was the predecessor of the KTEWU and was reinstated in 1999. Now Lee, who is being cheered on by his colleagues and other unionized teachers, says he has realized how unilaterally the KTEWU has been run and how it has grown to lose credibility among its members.