A 14-year-old boy who was attending a middle school in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, forced his classmate to write and sign a slavery contract in November last year on grounds that he had done “something wrong to the former.”
The victim, who had been bullied, was obliged write a “Body Abandonment Note” at the collective threat by five other colleagues of the 14-year-old.
The bullied had to crawl on all fours, weeping, in front of other classmates at the order of the attacker thereafter. They even beat him if he refused to obey, citing the note.
“I just did the same thing to him as I heard that he had been bullied since his elementary school days,” the 14-year-old boy said in an interview with The Korea Times on Jan. 16. “I only copied what others did to another classmate after making him write a note of body abandonment in May last year.”
School violence has been developing to more cruel type, such as slave contracts mentioned above amid the rapid distribution of advanced smartphones.
Another new type of bullying based on smartphone is “battery charger holder,” which refers to a bullied student who has to hold all kinds of battery chargers by smartphone makers for those who exhaust their batteries while playing games on the smartphone.
“In general, there is one battery charger holder in each class, with five to six in each grade in total,” said a 19-year-old high school girl at Goyang, Gyeonggi Province.
It is also common for bullies that extort money from weaker students on the occasion of anniversaries.
For example, they forced younger students to take money from others to buy “Pepero”stick snacks on Nov. 11 -- known as Pepero Day here -- the day of exchanging stick-shaped cookies between friends, families and couples. They also threatened weaker classmates to bring money to buy presents for their parents. The amount is not fixed and they say “As you want to do.”
“But less than 20,000 won is not acceptable although the amount is said to be enough if the victim wants to bring. He might be beaten with such small amount,” said a 16-year-old student in Nowon-gu, northern Seoul. “They might collect more than 100,000 won in one class.”
An anti-youth violence councilor said that new campus violence has also come from the imbalance of power between students. “What makes it worse is that new types of school violence have not easily spotted due to tricky smartphones and other high-tech devices,” said Jeon Yeon-hwa, counselor of the Foundation on Anti-Violence.