A recent survey has found that four in ten teachers in South Korea have severe symptoms of depression while one in six have considered suicide.

The Korean Teachers and Education Workers' Union partnered with Green Hospital to conduct a work-related mental health survey of three-thousand-505 kindergarten, elementary, middle and high school teachers across the country last month.

The results released on Tuesday revealed that 24-point-nine percent of teachers said they had mild depression while 38-point-three percent had severe depressive symptoms, some four times higher than that of the general public.

Participants cited the high number of phone and in-person consultations with parents, verbal and physical violence and complaints as reasons for feeling depressed.