Too Cruel for School

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Last spring, 14-year-old Song was dragged from the front gate of her Seoul high school to a vacant parking lot by 10 female classmates, who for the next four hours took turns slapping, punching and spitting on her while two boys recorded the assault on cell-phone video cameras. One attacker kicked Song between the legs; others threatened to bury her alive. "I believed them," says Song, a pretty, doe-eyed girl who suffered severe bruises and a dislocated jaw. She still can't talk about the beating without crying (she insisted on a pseudonym before telling her story to TIME). Her schoolyard transgression? Song's assailants thought the girl had insulted a member of their clique.

Song's ordeal is part of a rash of brutal incidents that have pushed school violence and gang activities to the top of the national agenda in South Korea. In a chilling report released at a police-sponsored symposium last month, high school teacher Jong Sae Yong claimed that as many as 400,000 kids—5% of the national student body—belong to loosely affiliated gangs. The gang members call themselves iljin ("top rankers") and are involved in organized bullying, extortion and sometimes sex crimes. The Education Ministry says Jong's findings are exaggerated, but officials established a task force this month to combat violence in schools. One indication of how entrenched the gangs have become is that the ministry said it could take up to five years to eradicate them. The problem "is rampant and it's getting more extreme and outlandish," says Yim Jae Yon, a counselor at a youth violence-prevention center in Seoul.

Iljin gangs are typically part extortion ring and part social club, according to Jong, who interviewed more than 200 teens over five years to prepare his independent study of the phenomenon. Senior gang members use younger iljin to intimidate still younger children into giving them money to finance dates and rowdy, beer-fueled parties. Jong, who teaches at Jeon Nong high school in Seoul, says gang members use the Internet to organize regional and even national networks. One favorite pastime: the so-called "fainting game," in which kids derive an oxygen-deprivation rush from strangling each other until they nearly pass out.

But the high school high jinks can be far more menacing. Iljin deal harshly with anybody who betrays the gang or tries to quit, Jong says. Of particular concern to parents is the rise of sexual violence. Prosecutors say the number of rapes committed by high school kids nearly tripled from 2001 to 2003, the last year for which statistics are available. Last week a judge ordered 10 teenagers charged with repeatedly gang-raping a 14-year-old girl in the southern city of Miryang to stand trial in juvenile court. Most iljin are decent kids in need of guidance, Jong insists, but "10,000 of them are very dangerous."

Police and youth counselors blame a familiar list of social forces for the trend, including the pressures of Korea's competitive school system, a lack of supervision by working parents, and the ready availability of violent video games and Internet pornography. Kids copy bad behavior out of curiosity, particularly when they can hide behind a group identity, says police juvenile-crime expert Kang Dae Il. Says Kim Yang Young Hee, a counselor at the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center, a Seoul-based NGO: "Kids think sexual violence is a game."

The Education Ministry plans to set up programs to teach students otherwise, and is looking at ways to improve the exchange of information about problem kids between parents, police and teachers. Meanwhile, police are granting amnesty to gang members who turn themselves in and confess to crimes by April 30—theft of less than $1,000 and beatings from which the victim recovered in less than three weeks will be forgiven. More than 2,500 students have taken advantage of the offer so far. That's a start. But experts are worried that hardened gang members won't be caught, partly because their victims are often too scared to turn them in and partly because some schools are more interested in avoiding bad publicity than exposing violent kids. Just ask Song. Her assailants were never punished, although they have to check in regularly with a supervisor. "I hope they forget I exist," says Song. "I'm still afraid." Fear of violence should not be part of any high school curriculum.