We now have three real-life schoolgirl canings in South Korea caught on camera.

Clip 1 of 3 - Classroom caning

In a Korean high school, a female student is summoned to the front of the class to be caned for being rude and lying. She is reluctant to come forward and appears to be challenging the teacher, perhaps denying guilt, but he insists. She comes to the desk and is given five strokes of the cane on the seat of her skirt. She remains standing up for this, rather than being made to adopt the all-fours posture which is more usual in Korean school caning. There is nothing jocular about this episode, although the strokes are not especially hard. The girl holds her bottom at the end of the punishment.

HERE IS THE CLIP:

Clip 2 of 3 - Another classroom caning

In a class of younger students, two girls are lightly caned, apparently as they pack up to leave at the end of the lesson. Each comes up to stand facing the blackboard, and the schoolmistress administers five rapid taps with the cane on their school uniform skirts.

    This is clearly not a serious punishment. I think the girls' yelling in reaction to it, and holding their bottoms afterwards, is meant as a joke. Certainly there is laughter, including from the teacher at one point.

HERE IS THE CLIP:

Clip 3 of 3 - Mass whacking outside school - TV news clip

This is a 1½-minute news item from Korean TV on 23 May 2006.

    It is evidently about school corporal punishment. Assistance from a Korean speaker in translating the gist of the commentary into English would be welcome.

    Meanwhile, what is most remarkable is a short sequence within the item, evidently caught on a cameraphone, in which a large number of schoolgirls are being punished outside the school.

    The girls are lined up in a row and have been made to adopt an "all-fours" or "push-ups" position while a man goes along the line, whacking each girl several times with a stick on her bottom.

    We know from other pictures that this "all-fours" posture is current in Korean schools, both as a punishment in its own right (holding the position for a length of time) and as a stance for the receipt of posterial chastisement.

    The implement being used is much too thick and heavy and rigid to be described as a cane in the British sense. It also appears not to be in conformity with the Education Ministry's rules for CP as set forth in this June 2002 news item. I would describe what we see here as almost "clubbing" rather than caning.

    The stick appears to be wielded with some force and without very much care; indeed, in Western cultural terms this treatment might be thought to be verging on the brutal. For that matter, nor would it be regarded as acceptable -- and especially not for girls -- in some other Asian countries, such as Malaysia or Singapore, where the moderate, properly regulated, formal, non-violent caning of schoolboys is routine and officially supported.

    However, the evidence is that in Korean culture this sort of thing is fairly normal and is regarded by many as a reasonable or even necessary way of dealing with misbehaving youngsters.

    In fact it may be that in Korean terms this is fairly mild stuff, because there are also reports (and there is at least one unpleasant video clip on Youtube) of students being violently punched and thumped on the spur of the moment by angry teachers -- which of course is not corporal punishment at all, but mere indefensible brutality.

    According to this September 2003 news item, 70% of Korean schools at that time allowed corporal punishment.

HERE IS THE CLIP:

See also: Overview of school CP in Korea