Friday, December 31, 2010

Death of an foreign English teacher

[Update]
 A commenter below says that "There was no gambling problem, nor debt of any kind. The Korean media hassled his friends, family and workmates for 'stories', and when they got none, made up their own." There was a similar post at Dave's ESL Cafe... but I can't find the link.

[Original Post]

On December 24, Yonhap (and 12 other news outlets) reported that on the evening of December 19 a 34 year-old Australian English teacher who worked part time at a university in downtown Seoul was found hanged in his office by his Canadian fiancee.

He’d apparently recently gone to a Casino in Seoul and racked up 8 million won in debt, and after a fight the night before with his fiancee, who he planned to marry in February, he killed himself.

This is the third death of a foreign teacher this year that I'm aware of, after a Korean Canadian teacher hanged himself in Busan in late March, and a teacher died of an apparent brain hemorrhage in Pohang in May.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pretty sure it was 18 million won... but still not a good reason to off oneself. RIP and condolences to the poor fiance and family.

matt said...

Some outlets like Newsis say it was 10 million won, others say 8 million.

Not sure I get the question mark picture in this article, but I liked the picture added to this article.

Brian said...

According to this page there were six American suicides from January to June 2010. Not sure about Canadian or Australian, or about what jobs these Americans had.

Unknown said...

Please don't believe all you hear. There was no gambling problem, nor debt of any kind. The Korean media hassled his friends, family and workmates for 'stories', and when they got none, made up their own.

This is not just 'news' for many people, it's something that is happening right now. Please respect this.