Footage of the sexual assault even surfaced, yet the perpetrators entered national universities ‘without a hitch’ as the school violence committee delayed proceedings

[Financial News] Male students at a national arts high school who were referred to prosecutors on suspicion of raping a classmate and illegally filming the assault have graduated without any school violence disciplinary action and gone on to national universities amid a delayed response by education authorities, sparking widespread concern. Criticism is mounting that structural flaws in the school violence response system have been laid bare, after the district education office postponed its decision while waiting for the investigation results and then closed the case once the students had graduated.
According to education and law-enforcement authorities on the 16th, police referred two male students, identified as A and B, who were then in their third year at the National High School of Traditional Korean Arts, to prosecutors without detention on January 27 on suspicion of special rape and special quasi-rape, among other offenses under the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment, etc. of Sexual Crimes. They are accused of raping their classmate C for about three hours at a music practice room in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province, on May 6 last year and illegally filming the assault on a mobile phone without C’s consent.

Police analyzed the victim’s statement, CCTV footage from the scene and footage of the crime found on seized mobile phones, and concluded that the allegations were substantiated.
However, disciplinary proceedings against the students accused of the assault stalled abnormally. The victim’s side immediately reported the incident to the school and police in June last year, shortly after it occurred, and the school asked the Seoul Southern District Office of Education in July to convene the School Violence Countermeasures Committee.

Under the Education Ministry’s guidelines, the committee should generally convene within 21 days of receiving a request, but the first hearing was not held until November 28 last year, about five months after the report. Even then, the School Violence Countermeasures Committee deferred its decision on disciplinary action, citing the ongoing police investigation.
After police referred the two students to prosecutors with a recommendation to indict, the victim’s side promptly notified the district education office the next day. But a new hearing was not held until April 6 this year, 69 days after the referral. A week later, on April 13, the district education office closed the case, saying, “The two students have already graduated, making it difficult to enforce any measures.” It took 291 days from the report to the case’s closure, but the outcome was “no action.”
As a result, no record of school violence-related discipline was entered in the students’ school records, and they each enrolled this year at national universities in Seoul and elsewhere in the country without any deductions or other disadvantages in the admissions process. One of them was confirmed to have enrolled at Korea National University of Arts (K-Arts). One of the students accused of the assault is reportedly denying the allegations.
An official from the district education office explained, “The two sides’ accounts differed, so we had no choice but to wait for the results of the police investigation,” adding, “Graduation was scheduled for about two weeks after the police referral, leaving too little time to finalize measures in practice.”
The case also came under scrutiny at a parliamentary audit. At a National Assembly Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee audit on the 14th, Kim Jae-won, a lawmaker with the Rebuilding Korea Party, pointed out to K-Arts President Pyeon Jang-wan that a student facing serious sexual violence allegations was enrolled at the university and pressed him on the need for disciplinary action. Pyeon replied, “If the sexual violence is found to have occurred, we will take strict action in accordance with the procedures set out in the school rules and regulations.”
Education and legal circles say urgent institutional measures are needed to prevent students accused of serious crimes from evading disciplinary action by exploiting deliberate delays in hearings or the timing of their graduation. They say the statutory deadlines for the School Violence Countermeasures Committee must be enforced and measures introduced to ensure disciplinary action can still be imposed and enforced after graduation.


[email protected] Moon Young-jin Reporter