Bullying records could be kept longer, more widely utilized

A freshman at Seoul National University celebrates the first day of school last month in Gwanak District, southern Seoul. [YONHAP]

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s People Power Party (PPP) and the government on Wednesday agreed to discuss measures aimed at penalizing school bullies during college admissions – and even employment processes.

The announcement, made after both sides met at the National Assembly for a policy consultation meeting, came weeks after a school bullying case involving the son of Yoon’s designate for a high-level post made headlines in the country and pressured the appointee to step down.

Chung Sun-sin, a prosecutor-turned-lawyer, declined to take up the position in February, a day ahead of assuming the job as head of the National Office of Investigation, which would have put him in charge of about 35,000 police investigation personnel.

Soon after Chung was named as the new chief of the office, reports about his son verbally abusing a fellow classmate back in high school surfaced in local media.

Chung came under particular scrutiny when it was revealed that he acted as his son’s legal representative and tried to reverse the school’s decision to transfer him to another school.

Public fury later peaked when outlets identified the son as a current student at the prestigious Seoul National University.

The son was found to have entered the school through the regular admissions track, which mainly looks at College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) scores.

The university said it did deduct points for Chung’s son after noticing he had a school bullying record, but that his CSAT scores were nonetheless high enough to grant admission.

After Wednesday’s policy consultation meeting with the government, Park Dae-chul, head of the PPP’s policy committee, told reporters that participants in the meeting agreed to preserve student records on school violence for a much longer period of time and have them weighed during regular university admissions.

School bullying records are currently preserved up to two years after graduation and almost no major universities in Korea consider those records when selecting students in their regular admissions tracks except for Seoul National University.

For how long those records will be preserved and how much they should impact college admissions were not specified by Park.

The lawmaker said there were opinions about the need to “seriously review” extending the records to as long as when the perpetrators seek jobs in the market.

The remarks drew mixed opinions from school administrators.

A professor at a private university in Seoul who oversees his school’s admissions process said the extent to which school bullying records affect applicants should be widely discussed and stipulated by a policy.

Jeon Su-min, a lawyer who used to handle school bullying cases at the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, said strengthened punitive measures for young bullies can only do so much to prevent harmful acts, saying that it would only trigger them to fight their cases in court.

Jeon also raised the question about “fairness,” saying that other serious juvenile crimes, such as sexual assault and theft, do not appear on student records.

“If school bullying leads to disadvantages in employment,” she said, “there will be too much disparity in terms of fairness compared to other crimes.”

BY CHOI MIN-JI, LEE SUNG-EUN [lee.sungeun@joongang.co.kr]