The 18-year-old Korean boy believed to have joined the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria began suffering from school violence when he was in elementary school. He confined himself to his home, seldom talking to his parents, after dropping out of middle school.
According to figures from the Education Ministry, the number of dropouts across the country was estimated at 280,000 in 2013, accounting for about 4 percent of the total juvenile population. Experts say some 40,000 dropouts are leading a secluded life, spending most of their time playing online games and using social networking services.
Over the past week, the number of followers of the boy’s Twitter account increased more than eightfold to nearly 600, with most of them believed to be in their teens or early 20s. Some of them expressed hopes they could also join the IS.
Korean society may no longer be immune from the possibility of its isolated and frustrated youths growing to become violent extremists like homegrown lone-wolf terrorists in some advanced countries. But the more immediate concern is the rising crime rate of teenagers who fall out of the school system. According to police data, dropouts accounted for more than 40 percent of 424,611 youths arrested between 2010 and July 2014. This means dropouts were 10 times more likely to commit a crime than teenagers on the whole.
Despite this alarming situation, little attention has been paid to dropouts, with an effective support system yet to be established.
Left out with no hope for their future, dropouts tend to commit increasingly felonious crimes. Internet-related crimes involving them are also on the rise.
Only a small portion of youth counseling centers run by the government across the country provide programs for dropouts. These services are far from sufficient to handle the problem. A more comprehensive and coherent system should be established among relevant government agencies to ensure the effective management and protection of dropouts. Attention needs to be paid particularly to runaway youths and juveniles who confine themselves to their homes.
Efforts should also be strengthened to reduce the number of dropouts, which has hovered above 60,000 annually in recent years. With concern growing that the country’s low birthrate will result in a shrinking workforce, it is all the more necessary to teach teenagers to become full members of society.
