Child Bullying Scandal: Seongnam City Council Member Removed from Middle School Parent Committee Chair Position

Local Residents and Online Mom Cafe Members Continue to Demand Resignation

A condolence wreath condemning Seongnam City Council member A, who has been identified as a perpetrator of school violence by their child, is placed on the sidewalk in front of Seongnam City Council. Photo by Yonhap News

A member of the Seongnam City Council in Gyeonggi Province, affiliated with the People Power Party, whose elementary school child was involved as a perpetrator in a school violence incident, has been dismissed from the position of parent committee chairperson at the middle school attended by their middle school child.

According to the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education and others on the 29th, Councilor A of Seongnam City Council had been serving as the parent committee chairperson at B Middle School, where their middle school child attends, not the child involved in the school violence incident. However, Yonhap News reported that they recently expressed their intention to resign voluntarily.

In this regard, the parent committee of the middle school held a meeting in the afternoon and decided to dismiss Councilor A, which is a more severe action than resignation (removal by external authority). Councilor A did not attend the meeting.

It appears that Councilor A expressed their intention to resign from the parent committee chairperson position at B Middle School as criticism over the school violence incident involving their elementary school child did not subside easily.

Local residents and members of online mom cafes demanded Councilor A’s resignation from the council. On the 23rd, they held a protest with condolence wreaths in front of C Elementary School in Bundang-gu, and on the 28th, they conducted a picket protest in front of Seongnam City Council and B Middle School.

Meanwhile, according to the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education and Seongnam City Council, from April to June this year, four 6th-grade students at an elementary school in Bundang-gu, Seongnam City, committed acts of violence against one student in a park by forcing them to eat a mixture of snacks and sand and pressing down on their body as a game penalty.