38 Opinion
School Bullying in South Korea By Yurok Han and Hyeonwoo Park
COMMUNITY
S
outh Korea’s economic and technological growth greatly aided the field of education. There is a great variety of benefits such as increased funding, interactive classrooms, and native teachers recruited from abroad, yet schools still struggle with the same challenges as in the past. We are adamant that readers have seen numerous cases of school bullying while watching the news or surfing the web. There were several cases which shocked both local and international communities. As a parent, friend, or student, you might feel indignant, frustrated, scared, or hurt when viewing such stories. Parents send their kids to school hoping that their children will study in a safe space surrounded by friendly classmates and motivating teachers.
www.gwangjunewsgic.com
October 2021
We believe one of the most fundamental problems is the fact that most people do not even know the accurate definition of bullying. A bully is someone who uses their strength or power to hurt or frighten other people. Thus, bullying can be diverse in its nature. To understand the scale of school bullying in South Korea, we would like to share some recent statistics. According to a survey by Blue Tree Foundation, since 2001, there have been 6,200 students who experienced bullying between the second and eleventh grades. Interestingly, the number of bullying incidents decreased in 2020 amid the COVID-19 wave. However, group ostracization grew as a result of increased internet usage, consequently leading to growth in cyberbullying. Once we had a look at the current state of affairs, we could not help but ask ourselves, “Why do people bully?” According to the field of psychology, bullying is a coping mechanism against stress or traumatic experience in the past. Traumatic experiences include the divorce of parents, the death of a relative, or the addition of new family members such as younger siblings or step parents. Kids who fail to positively respond to stress end up emotionally or physically hurting those around them. Now, adults, at
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least some of them, have knowledge and tools to channel their frustrations via meditation, exercise, or other such activities, while school children do not always know how to express themselves or ask for help. Also, children often do not know whether they are being bullied or feel ashamed to share their experience with adults, thinking that it will make the situation worse. Often some forms of bullying are presented as jokes, which makes it harder for students to speak out because they are under peer pressure. There are physical, verbal, social, and cyber forms of bullying. While the meanings of the first two will be clear to readers, we would like to shed a light on the last two types of bullying. Social bullying often happens behind the victim’s back. Actions that are intended to harm a victim’s reputation and social acceptance are considered to be examples of social bullying. Moreover, actions that cause humiliation to victims are included in social bullying. Cyberbullying is booming in South Korea nowadays. This is especially true since the outbreak of COVID-19, which pushed teenagers to engage in social media more than before. The reason why it is a perfect place for bullying is that internet users usually use nicknames. Therefore, it is easier to cause harm but remain behind the curtain unpunished. Although, it is possible to track down the IP of harmful users, it takes time. Harmful information such as insulting comments or photos and videos uploaded without the victims’ consent might spread through the web before being taken down. Initially, we thought that using real names might make people accountable for their actions because if their identities were known, they would think twice before writing some petty comments belittling people around them. However, this approach might cause more issues related to privacy. Another remedy we thought about were age limits preventing students at school from using social media, or stricter monitoring by social media companies, which would help to prohibit the posting of insulting comments. In the end, the only real solution is for everyone to think before they upload a message – unfortunately, most people do not.
2021-09-28 �� 11:20:29
