On the evening of 12 July, a 4-year-old child in Yangju, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea was abused while under the care of his Taekwondo instructor.
He would later lose his life when the instructor left him upside down in a rolled-up exercise mat for almost half an hour.
Earlier this week, South Korea news outlet JTBC obtained security camera footage from the child’s mother who wished for the public to know the full extent of what happened.
She released the harrowing footage hoping to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring to other children.
The released footage documented the moments leading up to the child’s death — including the abuse the deceased suffered beforehand.
At one point, the instructor had swung the young child by his hand, slamming him into a bigger boy. After a brief cut in the footage, the instructor can be seen slapping the boy in the face.
Following this, the instructor asked the boy to hang on to an upright mat by his hands.
When the boy could no longer hold on and fell to the floor, the instructor picked him up and flipped him upside down.
He tried to hang the boy onto the upright mat by his feet, but failed to do so. By this point, the boy had gone limp.
Source: SBS News
It was at this point that the instructor picked the boy up by his feet, and placed his head into the opening of the rolled-up mat.
He then began to shove the boy deeper into the opening until only his feet were visible.
Initially, the trapped child screamed and cried for help. Unable to move or breathe properly, the boy struggled in the tiny space, barely 20cm in diameter.
The boy’s screaming and struggling eventually subsided. However, this did not alert the instructor who didn’t take the boy out even after checking up on him.
The boy was only freed 27 minutes later. He had suffered a cardiac arrest and was rushed to the hospital.
He never regained consciousness and died 11 days later on 23 July. An autopsy revealed the boy’s cause of death to be hypoxic brain damage due to a lack of oxygen.
According to JTBC, the instructor immediately erased the security camera footage following the incident.
However, local police were able to restore the footage which showed the extent of the instructor’s actions.
According to SBS, the instructor is on trial for the abuse and murder of the deceased child.
The abuse charges were a new addition to the trial after it was revealed in the restored footage.
Police also believe that the boy had been regularly abused at least 140 times since May.
The instructor has admitted to the abuse but denied the murder charge. His lawyer said the instructor had no intention to kill the boy.
He even said that other boys had been placed in a similar situation, saying that his actions were simply a joke.
He shifted the blame for the boy’s death onto the parents instead, pointing out that it was the parents who decided to end his life support.
The trial will conclude on 19 Dec, according to SBS.
Also read: Teacher in Korea sued for emotional abuse after asking student to solve problem on chalkboard
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Featured image adapted from SBS News and SBS 뉴스 on YouTube.
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