"Elementary Grade 2 Son Attending Academy Scratched on Face with Pencil by Older Student"... Parents Outraged

Daejeon·Sejong Mom Cafes, Posts from Affected Parents
"Drawn with a Pencil from Left Jaw to Forehead"
"Feeling Like Filing a Civil Lawsuit"

A second-grade elementary school student was scratched on the face with a pencil by a fourth-grade student during an academy class, sparking public outrage online.

On the 24th, a post titled "Request for advice on school violence counseling" was uploaded on a mom caf? in the Daejeon and Sejong areas. A, the parent of the victim and the author of the post, said, "During an academy class, a fourth-grade student scratched the second-grade child’s face from the left jaw to the forehead with a pencil." The photo posted by A clearly showed a scratch running from the center of the child’s forehead, across the eyebrows and eyes, down to the chin. Especially since the scratch passed over the eye area, it appeared to be a situation where the eye could have been seriously injured.

An elementary school student injured by being scratched on the face with a pencil. [Image source=Online community]

This incident occurred not at school but at an academy, and it was reported that the perpetrator and the victim do not attend the same school. A said, "At first, (the child) couldn’t even open their eyes," adding, "Seeing my child’s face like this breaks my heart and makes me furious. How could someone leave such a long scratch on a face? What if the eye had been deeply pierced?" She continued, "Even if the wound heals, it will leave a scar, and thinking about how much treatment the scar will require and how much pain the child will endure makes me very upset," expressing her anguish.

A said she was contacted about the incident while at work and was unable to talk much with the perpetrator or the academy because she was busy taking her child to the hospital. She said, "According to the school violence counseling results, it was determined to be school violence," and added, "No matter how young the perpetrator is, depending on how the other parent and the academy respond, I am considering reporting this as school violence or even filing a civil lawsuit."

Netizens who read the post commented, "The child must have been very scared and hurt. I’m angry about what they were thinking when they did that," "I don’t understand how a fourth grader could do that to a child two years younger, and what the academy was doing until it got to this point," "It’s a world where you can’t safely send your kids to school or academy," and "It’s so malicious, I’m angry. It’s very serious what happened to such a precious child’s face."

Meanwhile, according to the Act on the Prevention and Countermeasures against School Violence, school violence refers to violent acts that occur to students inside or outside of school. Regardless of the location, if a student is harmed, it is defined as school violence. School violence can be reported through the ‘117 School Violence Reporting Center,’ and to hold an academy accountable, a civil lawsuit must be filed against the academy.

Meanwhile, the number of school violence reports has been increasing every year. The number of reports received by School Violence 117 after the spread of COVID-19 were ▲5,555 cases in 2020 ▲6,823 cases in 2021 ▲8,114 cases in 2022 ▲8,654 cases in 2023, showing a 55.8% increase over four years. The ‘school violence victim response rate’ (the percentage of students among 100 who reported being victims), which indicates the severity of school violence, also increased from 2% in 2022 to 2.2% last year.