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A scene of student violence that was placed online.
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Girls’ film of incident ends up on Internet
Four middle-school girls who assaulted a fellow student and filmed the incident will face criminal charges. The Danwon police station in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, said it will seek an arrest warrant for a third-year female student of a middle school in Ansan and will indict three other female students without detention. According to the police investigation, the main culprit and the victim became estranged because of jealousy over a male student. The four girls took the victim to an apartment, where they held her hostage for four hours. Two of the assailants hit her brutally and repeatedly, and the other two filmed the scene using their mobile phones. The assaulters also attempted to strip her top off, and filmed this, as well. The incident has gained national attention because a girl that received via e-mail the video from one of the students involved in the violent incident then posted the clip on the Internet.The police plan to probe whether or not the girl put the video on the Internet deliberately. The victim, further in shock because of the knowledge that the scene of her assault is being circulated on the Internet, is recovering at a psychiatric hospital. According to the police, some students said they filmed the video to ’show their friends,’ who were not present at the time of the attack, while other students said they took the video ’just for fun.’ Regarding this, Lee Su-jeong, a professor of Kyonggi University, said, "The assaulting students may have thought that they could blackmail the victim by using the video." As students have been exposed to violence since childhood, and technology makes it very easy to make a video on the spot, these students have become desensitized to the feelings of others, added the professor. Some experts said that the video record of this incident may have wounded the victim more deeply than the violence itself. Lee Jeong-hi, a consultant at an organization aimed at preventing juvenile violence, said, "The students victimized by violence say they hate when students take photos or videos more than the assault itself. To film and circulate a video [of such an incident] is violating the victim’s human rights twice." An elementary school student who ran away from home last month after suffering from harassment by a group of classmates said that he decided to leave out of shame, as his beating at the hands of his classmates was captured on photo by a student with a mobile camera phone. As school violence becomes more serious and involves younger victims and perpetrators, schools are struggling to provide sufficient preventive measures. Most elementary schools in the metropolitan area provide anti-violence education, but almost half of those schools carry out this education for less than five teaching hours per year. Park Hyo-jeong, a researcher of the Korean Educational Development Institute, said that "most school violence happens in middle schools; therefore, it is important to provide the necessary preventive education in elementary schools in advance." Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]
