How hot is a curling iron?
125 – 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
425 degrees Fahrenheit, this is the temperature to cook a steak.
Yet this curling iron, as hot as the oven to cook a steak, is directly put on human flesh – the arm of a girl. When the wounds from the curling iron start to form scabs, they out straight pick the scabs – peel the scabs off should be the more accurate description – and apply the curling iron to the same spot again. This process repeats and repeats itself over and over again, for the suffering of the victim and the cruel entertainment of the bullies.
You may recognize this scene from the popular Korean drama featured on Netflix, The Glory. In the scene, the victim girl, Dong-eun, was tortured by the bullies in an unattended gym. The bullies applied the curling iron to Dong-eun’s arm again and again, “to check if the curling iron is hot enough,” after Dong-eun first reported the bullying incidents to the teachers, who ultimately treated the bullying problem with disheartening indifference, leaving Dong-eun to the cruelty of the bullies once again. The authorities failed her.
(Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/79/The_Glory_TV_series.jpg)
As unbelievable as it may sound, the bullying incident in The Glory is not a completely fictional case; it is based on a real bullying incident that happened back in 2006, the Cheongju curling iron case.
We’ll get to that in a bit.
No matter if it’s the K drama or real life, we’ve seen numerous bullying cases, big and small, capturing both local and even international attention, like the 2006 curling iron case. More than a couple of people have wondered and these cases are even discussed in internationally recognized media platforms by celebrities and influencers. Why does Korea seem to have so much bullying?
One of the key reasons lies in the deeply ingrained and rooted class distinction and hierarchy ideas in Korean societies. In Korean societies, people are significantly impacted by Confucian values, which emphasize respect for authority and adherence to social hierarchies. There is the power dynamic, the power difference between, for example, a father and a son, an emperor, and a subject, and the elders and the youths. In the Korean social system, people who are older are generally expected to be more respected by people who are younger.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnc5d-6RVso)
Bringing this to the education system, this means that students from higher grades often have determining power and authority over students from lower grades, and the scary thing is – this is considered a social norm… even if it means the “authorities” abuse their power. What is often more terrible is that people who deviate from these expectations of power hierarchy may face social exclusion and become targets for bullying and mistreatment. In these environments, seniors may often target juniors for whatever ridiculous reasons – maybe just to entertain themselves by exerting power and reaffirming their authority over juniors younger than them.
Because of this social phenomenon perceived as “normal”, according to the Ministry of Education, physical bullying increased from 10.7 percent between 2013 and 2020 to 13.3 percent in 2022 – this means more than one person in ten people are suffering from physical bullying in South Korea now. If you look at the people around you, there is a good chance that at least one or two of them are victims of bullying.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnc5d-6RVso)
Take the 2006 curling iron case for example. It started with the bullies asking the victims for money, and ultimately when the victim could not afford to pay them any more money, this was when the cruelty started – there was even the blatant scar left 20 years after the atrocity. No one could have ever imagined the immense physical and psychological harm that these bullies had done to the victim.
What is the worst part about school bullying in Korea is how the bullies will often go almost unpunished after committing such atrocities. In The Glory, Dong-eun eventually succeeds in completing her revenge against the bullies that once almost destroyed her, and the bullies eventually receive the punishment as a consequence of their deeds. This is perhaps the most satisfying scene when watching this series – witnessing the revenge of the victim.
Yet, unfortunately, the drama does not always reflect real life. Again taking the 2006 curling iron case as an example, the victim stated in an interview that the bullies were even calling for a fundraiser for a non-profit organization after physically abusing the victims. If the bullying action itself cuts deep into the wounds of the victims, the protected and unpenalized bullies undoubtedly cast another layer of harm to the victims and their desires to find justice for being abused.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnc5d-6RVso)
Street interviews in South Korea further reveal how common school bullying is in South Korea – with most of the interviewees reporting that they have experienced bullying in some way when they were students. This confirms how accurately The Glory’s scenes depict real bullying incidents in schools. With the painful screaming of Dong-eun still lingering in our minds, the prevalence of such bullying is almost unbelievable. Like myself, people who are fortunate enough to have never experienced such bullying and abuse may often question, “How is this real?”
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUmHM9zKe50)
Even though reluctant, we would have to accept that these evil deeds are really happening around us right now.
I wish that at the end, what you take from this video should be sympathy for the victims of bullying, awareness of the prevalence of bullying, and perhaps the courage to say no to bullying around you.
