In the olden days, Koreans were advised not even to step on the shadows of a schoolmaster, whom Confucianism put in stature equal to that of fathers and the ruling monarch. Nowadays, it would be anachronistic to demand such etiquette. Nor would schoolteachers expect any such respect from their students.

Even so, it cannot be put aside as a simple educational problem if many schoolteachers often find themselves helpless in dealing with unruly students in classroom, some of them affiliated with school gangs. They have few effective tools with which to discipline students engaging in all types of violence against other students. Not infrequently, teachers themselves are also ridiculed, blackmailed and even physically attacked by those students when they try to force them to behave themselves.

School violence is such a serious problem that schools, parents and society as a whole now have to pool their wisdom in their search for a solution. The first step to be taken in this regard is to restore the crumbling authority of schoolteachers.

Korean society had a rude awakening when it learned about what forced a middle school student in Daegu to take his own life some weeks ago. The boy said in his suicide note that two of his classmates wrapped a power cord around his neck, dragged him around and told him to eat cookie crumbs off from the floor, in addition to beating him and taking money from him frequently.

Equally shocking is the suspicion that the incident may not be an isolated case. Another middle school student killed himself in Gwangju, apparently because he could not endure bullying. It is not clear yet what caused him to take his own life, because, unlike the Daegu student, he left no suicide note and made no mention of his forthcoming suicide in his diary. But police say they confirmed that three of his classmates used to beat him and took money from him.

Cases involving students committing suicide because they cannot stand being bullied are undoubtedly extreme ones. Some victims transfer to other schools and resume normal school life. But reports abound about students whose lives are ruined or nearly ruined as a consequence of school violence. Some of them have quit school, some others have received psychotherapy and still others never fully recovered from their ordeal.

No less serious is wangtta, or being forced into outcast status, in school. Students find it no less unbearable to be ostracized by their classmates. The use of violence may or may not be involved in wangtta cases. Here again, some victims have been driven to commit suicide.

Presumably, it may not be unusual for bullying and wangtta cases to be resolved with the intervention of competent schoolteachers, though they may not have drawn public attention because they have rarely been covered by news media. Yet, many teachers have been openly taunted, blackmailed or injured by school bullies when they attempted to prevent them from harassing other students.

A case in point involved a middle schoolteacher in Gyeonggi Province. When he disciplined a boy for harassing a girl student, the boy reportedly told him to watch his back while walking on the street at night.

Female teachers more easily fall victim to the use of violence. They are often punched, kicked or pulled by the hair by pupils when they scold them or take other disciplinary measures against them.

But the sternest action that schoolteachers are authorized to take against those errant students is to order a 10-day suspension from school. But the punishment is all but worthless if the students resume bullying when they get back to school. True, a disciplinary committee may order their school transfer. But such an order has rarely been enforced in the face of resistance from their parents.

Schoolteachers need to be authorized to take strong disciplinary action, including sending student bullies to other schools without obtaining approval from their parents. They should also be allowed to refer the use of violence in school, which has reached an intolerable level, to law-enforcement agencies.