The topic of school violence continues to draw major attention from Korean media. There have been countless cases of serious school violence with many ending in suicide. Just last year in December a student in Deagu committed suicide after being bullied, this being followed by another two suicides in Deajon in December last year and January this year. According to statistics, one child commits suicide in South Korea everyday, with bullying being one of the causes. School violence in Korea has been increasing drastically and the problem reached such a scale that the government has decided to make it compulsory to record all such cases on the permanent school records of those students who participate in school violence. The following is a news report about another unfortunate suicide incident which happened on 18th of April and has received a lot of netizens’ attention.
From MBN News:
Bullied student commits suicide. His last text message “If you dare come to my funeral…”
“If you come to my funeral, I will kill you!” was the last text message Lee sent to his bully Yeon, shortly before he committed a suicide by jumping off the 20th floor of his apartment house.
Just before his suicide, at 8.45 in the morning, Lee sent the message to the bully, and at about 9.30 he left a suicide note and then jumped off the 20th floor of his own apartment.
It was revealed that since the middle of March, for over a month, the Lee suffered persistent bullying from his classmate Yeon.
The bullying included pricking Lee’s body by pencil, catching and pulling him from the back, and spitting in his face. During art class, bully Yeon poured water over Lee’s picture and at times used to beat Lee’s back and head violently.
After almost one month of bullying, Yeon insisted that Lee joins his club. He said that if Lee joined his club, he wouldn’t bully him anymore, so Lee reluctantly joined his club.
However, after joining the club Lee had to spend all the spare time with Yeon. Lee said in his suicidal note “It feels like I have become his subordinate. I hate spending time with that bastard more than anything else.”
Yeon told to the police “bullying was quite entertaining so I just continued bullying him for fun”.
The police stated that “they took all the 10 members of Yeon’s club in for further investigation due to the suspicion that they might be a school gang” and that “since Yeon is an underage not even 14 years old, they are conducting further investigations to decide whether he should be sent to a Youth Detention Centre”
Comments from Nate:
김현용:
He should be executed for fun.
최민영:
How angry and distressed he must have felt to leave such a text message and end his life at such a young age… And the bully. You say for fun? Can you make this kind of fun with kids that are stronger than you? You won’t be able to have any social life even when you become adult.
강동완:
You son of a bitch, you will die no matter if you go to the funeral or not.
이충희:
I really hope that his teachers will record this in his student record.. and although grades are important, I think that companies should check students’ records in the last stage of recruitment process……. student records are written by class teachers who had the opportunity to observe the student for long time while he was at school, I think that companies would be able to take the applicant’s student record into consideration… maybe it’s not realistic… I wonder if this would make the last stage of interview a little bit easier…
이정환:
I would like to put acid on his face for fun and then say sorry
이창근:
He has to be punished and this must be stamped out now. I think we have to let the adolescents that mock adults know the power of adults and the power of law. If we just hush this now, it’s going to happen again.
신대규:
You should have just attacked the bastard with all the power of the resolution to die… it’s a pity… I hope that the bastard bully will feel guilty for the rest of his life.
곽세영:
에휴… It’s important to bring up children properly… not only worry about whether my child gets bullied ….but also worry about my child bullying other children. I hope there is no more victims and no more bullies anymore. I hope that from an early age, parents teach their children to have understanding and consideration for others. It’s really not study what’s important ….
최고일:
There are so many cases of young children committing awful crimes. The law must change. There should be no distinctions in the face of law, regardless of age or sex. My conviction about this has been growing stronger and stronger lately.
방미숙:
I know an elementary school 4th grade student who got grabbed by the collar and robbed of his money when he went to toilet. So he mustered courage and told his mum.. And his mum told his class teacher… But the class teacher and the headmaster didn’t even open a committee.. and just said let’s just leave it… The victim and the bully are still studying in the same class…!!! Who in the world should he ask for protection… he even had a consultation with the school vice-commissioner but it was of no use… So at the end he went to police and wrote up a statement, and got diagnosis from mental clinic… Only then did the school start to slowly move…!!! And still the Office of Education and the school are like “we don’t know anything” and are busy to hush it!!! What should we do? The system must be drastically changed… ugh….
이대균:
“bullying was quite entertaining so I just continued bullying him for fun”.This bastard is completely mad…In the future he might kill someone just for fun…He has a psychopathic tendency. He should be confined to a psychiatric hospital.
최택원:
In this case we should use the guilt-by-association system…. the upbringing plays a role in this too… parents should be punished with him…
정진구:
I want to stick a needle underneath his nails for fun.
정세헌:
If he can’t be punished as an underage, you should make sure his parents pay for this.
윤일한:
I pray that he will rest in peace. While we are following America in everything, why can’t we follow them in education system? If he bullies friends and talks back to the teacher, he should be suspended from school or forced to stay at school after the class. Also if a teacher does any nonsense, he should be divested of his teaching qualification.
정미화:
You are not going to send him to Youth Detention Centre because he is not 14 yet? Huh, that sort of law must be abolished… a child has died… It’s because the law is this crap, that kids have no fear of law…
김효진:
Who is the mother and father of this scumbag?
박덕진:
Disclose the bully’s mother and father as well~~ fuck!
신성훈:
The identities of school bullies should be made public the same way as the identity of sexual assailants, so that they can’t get a job and get married in the future.
배경인:
How painful that must have been. Because of this I feel quite stunned since the morning today. Having children is scary. To think that my child would have to grow up in such a pain, or that my child would inflict this kind of pain onto another child. The society is quite scary really.
허춘훤:
Amend the law to include only youngsters under 12 years old. Once kids go to middle school they already understand all there is to understand.
김용대:
Make his face public. If a person dies, it’s not a joke, it’s a murder.
김재광:
Lee: ‘It feels like I have become his subordinate. I hate spending time with that bastard more than anything else.’ Yeon: ’bullying was quite entertaining so I just continued bullying him for fun’. This is the reality of our society. The strong bully the weak and the weak have to suffer the bullying. And the school is just concerned about their school image, so they don’t pay any attention to this. I want to ask the school and the Office of Education to please be concerned about this and pay attention to whether there are any students who are being bullied. So that this kind of tragedy doesn’t repeat anymore…
윤요한:
Our school parents ke ke ke ke ke You are worried about your son? He might be bullied??? ke ke ke ke ke ke ke Try consider the idea that it might be your son who is the bully ke ke ke ke All parents sending their kids to army are worried that their kids will get beaten. But have you ever thought about the fact that it might be your child beating the other kids?? ke ke ke ke
