[Column] Treating both victims and victimizers is key

Park Ok-sik

The author is director of the Youth Violence Research Institute.

School bullying is an important issue that will decide the future of our society. Recently, after school bullying by a son of a social leader shed new light on the issue, arguments were presented to find a new resolution. Discussions are actively ongoing to come up with a policy alternative. School bullying is a special character of an adolescent period when the social relationship between the strong and the weak is being shaped. But the problem has become even more serious today due to parents’ intervention.

A new term, “Parents’ free pass,” has been coined to refer to cases where the parents’ legal ability and social status were used by school bullies to avoid punishment, indicating that parents are frequently intervening in cases. Youngsters with powerful parents, therefore, are using school bullying to relieve their stress.

On the other hand, the victims who do not have a “Parents’ free pass” are suffering from psychological and mental damage and unable to adapt to school and society. In some extreme cases, the victims are committing suicide.

School bullying has existed in the past, but the Korean society started using the term “school violence” from 1995 after a series of suicides by victims. In 2004, the Act on the Prevention of and Countermeasures against Violence in Schools was enacted. After a school bullying victim in Daegu killed himself in 2011, a new turning point was created to counter school violence.

In 2012, revisions were made to the law to enforce stronger measures, and the number of school bullying cases has significantly dropped. In 2020, the deliberation and decision powers over school bullying cases were handed over from schools to district education offices, and local boards against school violence were set up to address the issue under the revised law.

As school violence issues go beyond schools and spread to homes and society, we need a fundamental resolution. The biggest problem in devising countermeasures against school violence is that the government draws up strong measures and systems only after a major case takes place. Although Korea has become an advanced country, we still lack a future-oriented approach to school violence. Another problem is that institutions and organizations concerning school violence have focused their measures on rehabilitating the perpetrators. When cases have occured, they have failed to come up with clear responses in the face of divided opinion. As time passed, the issue just faded away.

Now is the time to come up with cool-headed responses from the perspective that both victims and perpetrators are our children. First, we need effective professional counseling programs as well as active legal and systemic measures to heal the victims. Because the role and function of families have weakened and school bullying has become an issue that families cannot handle alone, schools and local communities must strengthen their roles and functions to protect youngsters.

In particular, the recovery and healing function of the schools should be reinforced with teachers at the center to allow youngsters to escape from school violence. As school violence victims often have a hard time adapting to school and social lives, their lives tend to fall into despair.

Recently, many athletes, celebrities and public servants are laying bare their pasts of being school violence victims. Their cases are treated as a serious social issue even after more than 10 years have passed. It shows the extremely serious aftereffects of school violence.

Effective measures for perpetrators are also necessary. Strong punishments and reprimands are needed, but they cannot be a complete response. Unconditional forgiveness and lenience, of course, cannot be proper responses. The only way to accomplish a complete resolution of school violence is reconciliation between victims and perpetrators. It is important that victimizers sincerely reflect on their wrongdoings and make efforts to reconcile with their victims.

New measures against school violence that are being pushed forward now must be free from a biased framework or a framework polarized between victims and perpetrators. We hope that effective new measures will be created so that both victims and perpetrators can recover and heal themselves through reconciliation in order to return to society as healthy members.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.