8 out of 10 University Students Say "Military Culture Must Disappear"
There has been a report that students from the theology department of a private university in Chungnam disciplined their juniors. Photo by Online Community Capture
[Asia Economy Reporter Park Hyun-joo] The controversy over the 'military-like culture within universities' has once again come under scrutiny.
On the 30th, a report surfaced on an online community claiming that students at a private university in Chungnam gathered their juniors late at night to give them disciplinary training. The attached video shows dozens of students lying on the playground receiving physical punishment, while three seniors appear to be walking among them. The poster explained, "At 11 p.m., they gathered the kids and enforced discipline by saying 'sleep facing forward, sleep facing backward.'
Netizens expressed difficulty in understanding the military-like culture within universities. They questioned the reason for enforcing such discipline on juniors in a school setting rather than in the military.
This controversy over the bad practice of enforcing discipline on juniors is not new. In 2019, a university in Chungju, Chungbuk, was reported for a practice that prohibited freshmen from wearing wireless earphones. In the same year, a university in Sejong City was exposed for enforcing campus dating bans as well as strict rules on attire and behavior, with scholarship revocations and penalties imposed on those who did not comply.
The current state of military-like culture within universities is clearly reflected in statistics. According to a 2020 study titled 'Research on Violence and Human Rights Violations within Universities and Improvement Measures' published by the Korea Institute of Criminology and Justice, 46.4% of the 1,902 university and graduate students surveyed had experienced human rights violations at least once within their universities.
According to a survey conducted by Alba Heaven, a job portal specializing in part-time jobs, among 1,028 university students, 88.8% of those who experienced senior bullying reported stress caused by it. The most common types of senior bullying they experienced were 'forced greetings' (34%) and 'forced drinking' (18.4%). This was followed by 'restrictions on clothing such as makeup and hairstyle' (10.7%), 'restrictions related to messenger use' (10.4%), and 'physical punishment' (10.2%).
University students were found to have a negative perception of the military-like culture within universities. Among the respondents, 79.6% of 10 students believed that the university military culture 'should disappear for any reason.' Those who thought it was 'somewhat necessary in organizational life' accounted for 17.2%, and 3.1% answered 'not sure.'
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