South Korea - Five clips of schoolboy punishment. Clip 5 is

In present-day South Korea it seems to be common for punishment to be delivered in a classroom or corridor. With the spread of mobile telephones that also function as video cameras, this has led to several CP scenes filmed by other students becoming available. These clips show secondary boys being disciplined by teachers.

CLIP 1 OF 5

Do not blink or you will miss this clip: it lasts just 4 seconds.

    Two secondary boys are being disciplined in a school corridor, assuming the classic South Korean punishment position: hands on the floor, bottom sticking up. We see a teacher giving the first one two fairly vigorous strokes of the cane across the seat of his trousers. That boy immediately gets up and goes on his way while the other one receives one stroke before the clip ends - presumably the first of two or more strokes.

    If we look again at the clip, right at the beginning we can see another student who has clearly just been caned before the filming started, holding his throbbing buttocks as he walks away to the left of camera (pictured right).

    This is just a brief glimpse of what seems to be a fairly routine school punishment in Korea.

HERE IS THE CLIP:

CLIP 2 OF 5

In this 25-second scene, a boy stands facing the blackboard to be punished across the seat of his trousers. The implement being used by the teacher appears to be some sort of ruler, possibly being applied sideways on, though it is hard to be sure. Whatever it is, it does not look long enough to make all that much impression on a boy in his middle teens. By Korean standards this is a mild punishment, made less effective, I should have thought, by the fact that the student has not been asked to bend but is standing upright, in addition to which his trousers are fairly loose and the teacher makes little attempt to counteract this, though he does lift up the back of the boy's jacket out of the way (pictured right).

    Ten strokes are given altogether. After the fourth one the boy jumps away, as though in too much pain to continue, but I suspect he is "putting this on". At the end of the punishment he calmly returns to his place in the class. The atmosphere in the room is not very solemn, perhaps even mildly light-hearted, which tends to confirm that this is not a very serious occasion.

HERE IS THE CLIP:

CLIP 3 OF 5

This 2-minute clip shows a much more severe caning, in which four senior secondary boys, aged perhaps 16 or 17, take it in turns to receive about 20 hard strokes over the clothed posterior while bending over a desk, head down (pictured right), in a formal disciplinary ceremony. The atmosphere in the room is quiet and entirely serious.

    Allegedly the reason for this punishment is that the students refused to do their homework. Of course, there may be more to it than that.

    (UPDATE: It has been suggested that this may be a "hagwon" (after-hours crammer for extra tuition) rather than an ordinary secondary school, and that corporal punishment at such an institution probably has implicit or explicit parental consent.)

    We are calling it a "caning" for the sake of convenience but, as usual in Korea, the implement is not at all like a British (or Singaporean) punishment cane, i.e. a flexible rattan, but a thick rigid stick. In this particular instance the teacher is wielding it with both hands, something one would never do with a proper cane. In fact in some ways this could be more comparable with an American paddle, which sometimes is applied two-handed.

    The noise made on impact suggests that the stick may be of relatively lightweight wood; I think a heavier stick would probably make a duller thud. If not, this punishment would surely cause a lot of bruising, though still not nearly as much pain in total, or for as long, as if it were a proper rattan, 20 strokes with which would be completely off the graph in a school setting.

    (UPDATE: Some observers suggest the implement may actually be a hollow aluminium tube. This would probably be less painful than it looks.)

    (For comparison, note that the absolute maximum at even the toughest English school or reformatory was 12 strokes of the swishy rattan cane, and at the vast majority of schools the maximum was six, as it is now in Singapore; even that can cause superficial bleeding.)

    At least one of these boys looks to have padding down his trousers, and it is surprising that the teacher doesn't seem to notice or bother about this. He appears to be in both a hurry and a bad temper, neither of which is the ideal condition in which to carry out this task.

    The first boy finds the pain hard to bear after a dozen or so strokes and stands up, holding his backside and protesting that his punishment should end there, but the teacher gives him very short shrift, and he submits to the rest of it with an air of agonised resignation.

    The other three youths, having seen what to expect, undergo their canings stoically, but they are clearly hurting afterwards, padding or not. The second boy clutches his buttocks as he moves away from the desk.

HERE IS THE CLIP:

CLIP 4 OF 5

This 50-second clip from 2006 shows a secondary boy undergoing severe punishment with a paddle across the seat of his trousers. The offender, who must have done something quite bad, has been told to lean forward with his hands on some filing cabinets at the back of the class. There are four very hard strokes in all, with the teacher using a two-handed grip on the paddle, which he pulls right back before each stroke, rather in the manner of a golfer (pictured right).

    The first stroke is heard but not seen while the camera is wandering about. At this point there is a brief titter from the class, but it soon stops when it becomes obvious that this is a serious matter, and from then on the atmosphere is solemn. The second and third strokes are seen in fairly quick succession, the boy gasping in pain after each stroke. After the third stroke, he jumps back, clutching his buttocks and moaning, before resuming his position for the final stroke. At the end the camera roams about again but we can still hear the student moaning, I think in a resigned rather than a complaining tone.

HERE IS THE CLIP:

CLIP 5 OF 5

This is much more light-hearted than the others. It also involves an unusual posture for South Korea, viz. the student is lying flat across the top of a desk, a procedure more often seen in Vietnam. In a raucously jocular atmosphere, four boys receive several strokes on the buttocks with a short, thick cane from a smiling schoolmaster. This was said to be filmed in 2006 and the punishment was for being late to class.

HERE IS THE CLIP:

See also: Video clips: Korea: Schoolgirls