Korean school bullies go for free Wi-Fi

24 January 2012 08:04

The New Paper
Tuesday, Jan 24, 2012

A new form of bullying is taking place in South Korean schools.

Victims are forced to subscribe to Wi-Fi access that costs about US$40 (S$50) a month and then turn on the Wi-Fi function on their smartphones, Reuters reported.

This allows the bullies to take over the phone’s wireless connection, permitting them to surf the Web for free and draw down the phone’s battery because there are multiple users at one time.

“I am very worried my beloved smartphone may be worn out,” one 16-year-old boy old wrote anonymously in an online bulletin this month.

“I really want to cry. I am posting this because seriously, I don’t know what I am supposed to do after the semester starts.”

While new technology has expanded the range of rewards for bullies, the act itself is an old problem in South Korea’s rigid school system.

A survey by the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Association and the Chosun newspaper reported that 4.1 per cent of schoolchildren said they had been bullied, with some even taking their own lives.

But the new bullying methods may take some tackling, with traditional responses lacking teeth, experts said.

“New schemes such as Wi-Fi stealing are blurring the boundaries of school violence,” said a teacher who is part of a teachers’ group that researches bullying.

“Some people say this is not a threat nor violence. But we need a new definition for school violence in terms of laws and norms,” he added.
This article was first published in The New Paper.