School bullying is back with a vengeance now that children have returned to their classrooms after lockdown.
Many parents are newly worried as Netflix's latest hit Korean series "The Glory" starring Song Hye-kyo brought the issue to the forefront. Last week, the nominee for the National Office of Investigation resigned just a day before assuming his post, amid a bullying controversy involving his son at school.
Chung Sun-sin found himself in hot water after it was belatedly revealed that his son had bullied a classmate in high school for almost an year and was simply moved to another school instead of getting punished and eventually won a coveted place at Seoul National University.
Elementary schoolkids are more sensitive to bullying than older students. According to last year's survey, 3.8 percent of elementary schoolkids said they had fallen victim to bullying, compared to 0.9 percent of middle schoolkids and 0.3 percent in high school.
Han You-kyung at Ewha Womans University said, "Elementary schoolkids are more vulnerable to swearing or slang and easily feel bullied." But bullies are also getting younger and younger.
Since 2012, the Education Ministry has been conducting an annual survey of students from fourth through 12th graders about violence in schools. The proportion of students who had suffered from any type of violence dropped from 2.2 percent in 2013 to just 0.9 percent in 2016, but rebounded to 1.6 percent in 2019.
It fell to 0.9 percent again the following year, when classes moved online in lockdown but rose to 1.1 percent in 2021, when some face-to-face classes resumed. Last year it stood at 1.7 percent, or about 54,000 victims across the country.
In last year's survey, verbal violence was the most common form of bullying at 41.8 percent, followed by physical violence (14.6 percent), ostracism (13.3 percent), and online bullying (9.6 percent). The proportion of online bullying dwindled 0.2 percentage points but has evolved into more complex forms, making it difficult to track or punish.
Choi Woo-sung, a school violence expert, said, "It's getting more and more difficult for school authorities to deal with bullying due to new types of cyber violence ranging from gossip apps to deepfakes."
Minor cases of violence are handled by schools themselves. If they cannot be settled, cases are referred to review committees at regional offices of education. The number of such cases jumped from 8,357 in 2020 to 15,653 in 2021 and 9,796 in last year's first semester alone or more than 20,000 if projected on the whole year.
Most perpetrators were merely slapped on the wrist -- most were banned from approaching the victim (78.5 percent) or ordered to write a letter of apology (63 percent). In more serious cases, 4.5 percent of perpetrators were sent to another school, 4.2 percent to another class, and only 0.2 percent were kicked out of school. Group bullying by violent gangs has dropped slightly compared to a decade ago, but new surreptitious types of cyber and sexual violence are increasing.
Parents increasingly take sides in disputes, and some bullies' parents have even sued the victims, turning the courtroom into the arena for mudslinging. According to the Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations, the number of judicial review filed with the administrative court by parents of bullies rose to 682 in 2021. About 15 to 25 percent of claimants won, and others went so far as to file civil lawsuits at the cost of even tens of millions of won if they failed to get what they wanted (US$1=W1,302).
