Bullying Experience of Racial and Ethnic Minority Youth in South Korea

Abstract

This study compared bullying experiences between ethnic minority youth and Korean majority youth in South Korea, and examined whether the student-teacher relationship is associated with their bullying experiences. Participants comprised 148 ethnic minority students and 165 Korean majority students in Grades 4 to 11 in South Korea. Bivariate analyses revealed that ethnic minority youth were more likely to be relationally bullied, but were less likely to bully their peers than Korean majority youth. Ethnic minority youth, with Southeast Asian mothers in particular, are most likely to be victimized and least likely to perpetrate bullying. Generalized linear model analyses identified that the youth’s positive perception of teachers decreased the risk of both victimization and perpetration. Policy and practice implications were discussed.

Keywords

racial bullying bullying in South Korea ethnic minority youth in South Korea student-teacher relationship in bullying

As it has entered a new stage of economic development and undergone major demographic changes, South Korea has witnessed a sharp increase in the number of international marriages and immigrants since the 1990s. The emergence and growth of this population have resulted in the increasing number of families formed with non-Korean ethnic members and their children. The children of international marriage and immigrants in the country numbered 67,806 in 2014, which was more than a 10-fold increase from 6,121 in 2005, now composing 1.07% of the total number of school-age children in South Korea (Korea Ministry of Education & Korean Educational Development Institute, 2014). In response to these societal changes, the South Korean government established “The Multicultural Families Support Act of Korea (MFSAK)” in 2008. According to MFSAK, families of international marriage and immigrant families are classified as “multicultural families” and their children as “multicultural children.” As 96.8% of multicultural children in the nation were born of a Korean father and a foreign mother, with 34.3% of the mothers being Japanese, 33.2% Southeast Asian, and 25.2% Chinese (Yang, Yoon, Shin, & Choi, 2016), multicultural children are mostly biethnic Korean, as opposed to monoethnic Korean. Although South Korean society hardly uses the term “racial or ethnic minorities,” using instead “multicultural children” to refer to these biethnic or non-Korean ethnic children in its public discourse, the concept of multicultural children in South Korea is in line with that of racial or ethnic minority children understood in other societies for two reasons. First, multicultural children are a small group who make up about 1% of the entire school-age child population in South Korea, but has been growing fast in the past two decades, as mentioned above. Second, these children carry more psycho-socio-economic vulnerabilities than Korean majority children born from both Korean parents. As South Korea has been one of the most ethnically homogeneous countries in the world throughout its history, families with non-Korean ethnic members and their offspring are easily alienated or looked down by Korean mainstream society (Ahn, 2012). Also, due to their parents’ low socioeconomic status (SES; Yang et al., 2016), the familial and community environment for these children are often far from conducive for healthy development (Jo, Seo, & Kwon, 2008; Oh, 2006). As such, racial or ethnic minority youth in the South Korean context for this study are defined as those from families of international marriage or immigrant families, who are biethnic Korean or non-Korean ethnic, and referred to as multicultural children/youth in South Korea.

For their low SES and associated social vulnerabilities, studies have mainly focused on language issues, low academic performance, discrimination, and inadequate parenting among ethnic minority youth in South Korea (e.g., Jo et al., 2008; D. H. Lee, 2010; Oh, 2006), whereas bullying experiences of these minority youth have been less systematically investigated with a few exceptions (e.g., Nam, 2012). Although it has been increasingly recognized that building positive and healthy social relationships with diverse ethnic and cultural groups in a multicultural society is a new development task for early adolescents (Fandrem, Strohmeier, & Roland, 2009), prior South Korean research was limited to exploring the prevalence of victimization, seldom examining risk or protective factors associated with the bullying experiences of minority youth. The current study aimed to examine the extent to which ethnic minority youth in South Korea experience bullying victimization and perpetration, compared with Korean majority youth, and determine whether ethnic group membership and the student-teacher relationship have independent effects on their bullying experiences. As prior South Korean research focused exclusively on minority youth’s victimization, we attempted to fill the knowledge gap by exploring their perpetration experiences as well.

A child is bullied when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to the negative actions of one or more children. Negative actions can be carried out physically, verbally, or relationally by a person or group, with higher status or greater strength than the victim (Olweus, 1995). A review of South Korean studies has documented that about 30% to 60% of South Korean youth have been a victim or perpetrator of school bullying, suggesting that bullying is of great social concern in South Korea (Park, Lee, Jang, & Jo, 2017). Among various correlates, Western research has consistently found race and ethnicity to be a significant predictor of bullying in a multicultural context (Peguero, 2009). However, the direction of the association between minority status and bullying appears inconsistent. Research indicates that not all minority youth are more likely than majority youth to be victims or perpetrators of bullying; it depends on which racial or ethnic group they belong to. Hilton, Anngela-Cole, and Wakita (2010) found that African American students were less likely, but Hispanic American students were more likely to be victimized than White American students. In explaining these patterns, Peguero (2009) argued that Portes’ segmented assimilation theory for social mobility of minority youth from immigrant families can also be applied to bullying experiences. That is, their bullying experiences in the United States differ by their race or ethnicity, rather than their minority status per se. Specifically, Juvonen, Graham, and Schuster (2003) have also suggested that different social status and popularity as well as school engagement across different racial or ethnic groups in the school context may contribute to which racial or ethnic group would likely be victims, bullies, or bully-victims.

Despite the increasing ethnic minority youth population in South Korea, their experiences of bullying have seldom been compared with that of Korean majority youth. Lacking such comparative evidence, available research fails to make an empirically informed suggestion on whether it is necessary that prevention and intervention strategies particularly target minority youth to address bullying experiences among South Korean youth. Furthermore, given that the minority youth population in South Korea is ethnically diverse by their foreign parents’ country of origin, there may be different patterns in bullying experiences by foreign parents’ home country. Indeed, a few studies have consistently reported that youth with foreign parents, whose physical makeup is notably different from Koreans and who are from poorer countries than South Korea (e.g., Southeast Asian parents), were more likely to be ridiculed and excluded by their peers than those with parents from East Asia (e.g., Jun & Song, 2011; Oh, 2006). Also, as some of Southeast Asian parents’ cultural practices differ more from Korean cultural norms than those of Chinese and Japanese parents (Chao & Tseng, 2002), the cultural distance in upbringing between youth with East Asian parents and those with Southeast Asian parents may place the latter group at higher risk of victimization. As such, youth with Southeast Asian parents are hypothesized to be more likely to be bullied than those with East Asian parents.

Thus far, only a few South Korean studies have systematically investigated which type of bullying (i.e., verbal, relational, and physical bullying) is associated with the minority status or ethnic group membership. In South Korea, social exclusion of one student by a group of about 10 or more classmates, which is colloquially referred to as “wang-tta” in Korean or “ijimei” in Japanese, is the predominant type of school bullying (Koo, Kwak, & Smith, 2008). Although social exclusion, a form of relational bullying, is commonly observed in other societies, research indicates that compared with Western countries, it is more likely in Japan and South Korea for an entire class to make a covert decision to exclude one student, influenced by their collectivist and conformist culture (Koo et al., 2008; Yokoyu, 2005). Given that such social exclusion takes place in the interpersonal context largely based on differences in social status, but not necessarily on physical power (Archer & Coyne, 2005), it is hypothesized that relational bullying is the most common form of bullying experienced by minority youth who are usually seen on the margin of society in South Korea.

Also, most of previous studies in South Korea produced merely descriptive knowledge regarding victimization among ethnic minority youth; hence, little is known about the independent effects of ethnic group membership and other ecological systems variables, such as the student-teacher relationship, on bullying in South Korea. Although a review of South Korean studies described teachers’ awareness and perception of peer victimization (e.g., Hong & Eamon, 2009), few studies have directly examined the effect of the student-teacher relationship on bullying experiences among South Korean youth, and even fewer simultaneously examined the effects of ethnic group membership and the student-teacher relationship on school bullying in the country. However, positive student-teacher relationship has been found to predict the reduction of bullying among early to middle adolescents in Australia and France, lending further empirical support for the importance of the student-teacher relationship for students’ well-being during early adolescence (Murray-Harvey & Slee, 2010; Richard, Schneider, & Mallet, 2011). Accordingly, it is hypothesized that a positive student-teacher relationship is associated with less bullying experience in South Korea when ethnic group membership is being controlled for.

Method

Sample and Procedures

A two-stage sampling strategy was used for this study. The first study population was ethnic minority youth with at least one foreign parent, in primary (Grades 4-6), middle (Grades 7-9), and high schools (Grades 10 and 11) in the Gyeongnam Province of South Korea. Four areas of the province—Jinju, Goeje, Sacheon, and Hapcheon—were selected as sampling locations due to their diversity. Jinju is a midsized city, Goeje and Sacheon are industrial manufacturing sites, and Hapcheon is a predominantly agricultural area. As of 2013, a total of 1,083 ethnic minority children were residing in the four areas, comprising 23.4% of 4,627 minority children in Gyeongnam Province (2014). Although Gyeongnam Province has the third highest proportion of multicultural families in the nation (Korea Ministry of Gender Equality and Family & Korean Women’s Development Institute, 2013), most studies were carried out in the capital, Seoul, or Gyeonggi Province adjacent to Seoul where nearly 50% of multicultural families in the nation reside. As a result, bullying experiences among ethnic minority youth elsewhere, such as in smaller cities and agricultural areas, have been overlooked. Hence, the current study intended to explore the bullying experiences of minority youth in Gyeongnam Province.

A minimum sample size of 147 was set for ethnic minority youth and Korean majority youth, respectively, based on the power analysis for multiple regression with eight independent and control variables, aiming at a medium effect size at a power of .80 for a significance level of .01, following Cohen (1992). For a targeted sample size of 150, we proportionally allocated 60 from Jinju (40.0% of the ethnic minority sample), 40 from Goeje (26.7%), 30 from Sacheon (20.0%), and 20 from Hapcheon (13.3%), according to the total number of ethnic minority students in each area. To access potential study participants, we contacted social workers at a multicultural family support center in each of the four areas, who introduced us to foreign mothers of ethnic minority children. We obtained parental consent from them and conducted a survey with their children. The final sample size of this group was 148. In the second phase, we allocated 70 from Jinju (41.1%), 45 from Goeje (26.4%), 30 from Sacheon (17.6%), and 25 from Hapcheon (14.7%) in a targeted sample size of 170 Korean majority youth, both of whose parents are Korean, in order to match the majority sample’s geographical distribution with that of the minority sample. We recruited 165 Korean majority students from primary, middle, and high schools in the four areas. A total of 313 majority and minority youth were informed of the study purpose and voluntarily participated in the same anonymous survey. In the entire sample, 22% of them were at age 9 years, 68.1% at age 10 to 14 years, and 9.9% at age 15 to 17 years, with the majority being in their early adolescence (age = 10-14 years). The sample mean age was 10.98 years (SD = 2.097 years).

Although we initially intended to obtain a school sample of both ethnic minority and Korean majority youth, schools in the sampling locations have only a small number of minority students as this population is thinly spread across schools in the province. Due to time constraints, we had to sample minority youth through multicultural family support centers, whose main clientele is the foreign parents of minority youth. The four multicultural family support centers that we partnered with reported that the vast majority (67.8%-91.7%) of foreign spouses from multicultural families participate in their programs. Also, the multicultural family support centers provide mostly educational and informational services for foreign spouses while rarely providing their children with intervention programs for psychosocial issues, such as bullying. As such, it is likely that our minority youth sample recruited from the centers is fairly representative of youth from ethnic minority families living in the four areas, and unlikely to be at significantly higher risk of being a victim or perpetrator than those whose parents are not service users of the centers.

Measures

A modified version of the Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire (OBVQ; Harel-Fisch et al., 2011; Olweus, 2007) was used to measure bullying. For each of the two questions, (a) “How often have you been bullied at school during the past 3 months?” and (b) “How often have you taken part in bullying other peers at school during the past 3 months?” relational bullying was measured with four items (spreading rumors, purposely leaving a peer out of things, ignoring a peer, and leaving a peer out of conversations), verbal bullying with six items (teasing, taunting, threatening, calling names, making sexual comments, and talking about physical defects), and physical bullying with five items (kicking, hitting or punching, cutting with sharp objects, deliberate pushing, and breaking bones). The response options ranged from never (0) to more than four times (4). Reliability analyses yielded good alpha scores for items on overall (.86), relational (.70), verbal (.73), and physical (.64) victimization, as well as on overall (.85), relational (.71), verbal (.73), and physical (.63) perpetration. The OBVQ is known for its good psychometric properties validated in various countries (Koo et al., 2008), and considered culturally valid in South Korea as well. The questions are generically worded without a culture-specific descriptor or connotation, which makes them understood and interpreted consistently in translation. Also, Korean studies employing the OBVQ have produced good reliability scores of the scale (.78-.92), and suggested its construct validity by demonstrating empirical associations between constructs theoretically relevant to bullying (e.g., impulsivity) and bullying behaviors measured by the scale in South Korea (see C. Lee, 2010).

A student’s perceived relationship with teachers measured four areas: whether teachers (a) encourage students to express their own views, (b) treat students fairly, (c) give extra help when needed, and (d) are interested in the students (Harel-Fisch et al., 2011). Response options ranged from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). The internal consistency score of the measure was .88. Child’s gender and schooling (primary, middle, and high school), parents’ age, education, and nationality, and family type were measured as control variables. Age was not included in our regression models for two reasons: the key independent variable of student-teacher relationship is a significant influence on most of developmental and behavioral outcomes across all school-age groups (Berzonsky & Adams, 2003), and the prevalence rates of bullying victimization and perpetration were found to differ by developmental stages (e.g., early vs. middle and late adolescence), which correspond to schooling levels, rather than linearly correlate with age in years (Scheithauer, Hayer, Petermann, & Jugert, 2006).

Analyses

First, we performed descriptive analyses to present the demographic characteristics of the sample, and compared the demographic distributions between minority and Korean majority youth, using chi-square tests. Then, we conducted t tests to determine mean-level differences between the minority and the majority groups in the overall and the three types of bullying victimization and perpetration, and performed ANOVA to examine differences in the mean levels of overall victimization and overall perpetration among the Korean majority and three ethnic minority groups by foreign mother’s country of origin—Chinese, Japanese, and Southeast Asian. Last, for multivariate analyses, we used the generalized linear model to examine factors, including the student-teacher relationship, associated with overall victimization and overall perpetration, as the normal distribution of these dependent variables cannot be assumed. All independent and control variables were entered at the same step in the regression analyses because the relative contribution of each factor or different sets of variables to the variation of the outcomes is not the focus of our research questions. All the analyses were performed using SPSS 21.

Results

As seen in Table 1, ethnic minority youth were more likely to have a younger mother and older father, compared with Korean majority youth. Parents of minority youth were less educated than those of majority youth. The proportion of single- or no-parent households was lower for minority youth than majority youth.

Table 1.

Demographic Characteristics of the Sample (N = 313).

	Ethnic minority(n = 148)n (%)	Ethnic majority(n = 165)n (%)	Chi-square(p)
Gender
Boy	69 (46.6)	83 (50.3)	0.423
Girl	79 (53.4)	82 (49.7)	(.515)
School
Primary	107 (72.3)	106 (64.2)	3.024
Middle	31 (20.9)	40 (24.2)	(.220)
High	10 (6.8)	19 (11.5)
Mother’s age
30s	69 (48.3)	45 (32.8)	8.710
40s	62 (43.4)	84 (60.8)	(.005)
50s	12 (8.4)	9 (6.5)
Father’s age
30s	—	21 (15.9)	51.937
40s	85 (59.4)	99 (75.0)	(.000)
50s	58 (40.5)	12 (9.1)
Mother’s education
High school or less	87 (60.4)	39 (31.7)	26.899
College/university	55 (38.2)	71 (57.7)	(.000)
Graduate level	2 (1.4)	13 (10.8)
Father’s education
High school or less	117 (81.8)	33 (27.0)	80.623
College/university	21 (14.7)	76 (62.3)	(.000)
Graduate level	5 (3.5)	13 (10.7)
Family type
Both parents	146 (99.3)	144 (91.7)	9.544
Single parent/no parent	1 (0.7)	13 (8.3)	(.002)

Note. Ns vary by analysis due to missing data.

Table 2 shows that overall, ethnic minority youth were more frequently victimized than Korean majority youth. Among three different types of victimization, the minority group was more likely to experience relational victimization than the majority group. However, the minority group bullied their peers less frequently than the majority youth did for the overall and each type of perpetration. Also, bullying experiences were not identical among ethnic minority groups (Table 3). Apart from those with Japanese mothers, youth with foreign mothers were more frequently victimized than those with Korean mothers. Particularly, youth with Southeast Asian mothers were most frequently victimized, whereas youth with Japanese mothers reported the lowest frequency of victimization, even in comparison with Korean majority youth. It was found that youth with foreign mothers perpetrated bullying less frequently than those with Korean mothers, and youth with mothers from Japan and Southeast Asia bullied peers less frequently than those with Chinese mothers.

Table 2.

Results of t Tests: Comparison of Victimization and Perpetration Between Ethnic Minority Youth and Korean Majority Youth (N = 313).

Bullying experience	Ethnic minority (n = 148)	Korean majority (n = 165)	p
Bullying experience	$\bar{X}$ (SD)	$\bar{X}$ (SD)	p
Victimization	3.82 (5.13)	2.69 (4.71)	.043
Relational	1.16 (1.77)	0.56 (1.21)	.001
Verbal	1.97 (2.66)	1.54 (2.60)	.153
Physical	0.70 (1.36)	0.59 (1.50)	.504
Perpetration	1.23 (2.26)	2.49 (4.61)	.002
Relational	0.29 (0.79)	0.57 (1.25)	.018
Verbal	0.74 (1.48)	1.34 (2.52)	.010
Physical	0.20 (0.52)	0.58 (1.47)	.002

Table 3.

ANOVA Results: Victimization and Perpetration by Mothers’ Nationality (N = 300).

Nationality of Mothers	n	Victimization	Perpetration
Nationality of Mothers	n	$\bar{X}$ (SD)	$\bar{X}$ (SD)
Korea	160	2.69 (4.76)	2.50 (4.65)
Japan	33	1.45 (2.89)	0.91 (1.53)
China	44	4.75 (5.61)	1.93 (3.11)
Southeast Asian countries	58	4.47 (5.63)	0.88 (1.85)
Average total	295	3.21 (5.01)	1.92 (3.79)
p		.003	.015

Note. Southeast Asian countries include Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Five cases with mothers from Russia and Mongolia and eight cases with missing responses on the bullying variables were excluded from the analyses.

Results from the general linear modeling (Table 4) revealed that youth in primary school, with younger mothers, and who have less positive views of their teachers reported more frequent victimization. For perpetration, being a girl, having a younger father and a Southeast Asian mother, and having a more positive perception about teachers were associated with lower frequencies of perpetration.

Table 4.

Multivariate Regression Analyses on Bullying Experience of Children (N = 234).

	Victimization			Perpetration
	b	Wald chi-square	p	b	Wald chi-square	p
Constant	14.603	37.310	.000	11.182	33.910	.000
Gender^a	−0.953	3.517	.061	−0.876	5.928	.015
Schooling^b	−1.114	6.636	.010	−0.435	2.023	.155
Mother’s education	0.325	0.370	.543	0.029	0.006	.940
Father’s education	−0.075	0.018	.893	−0.060	0.023	.879
Mother’s age	−1.095	4.565	.033	−0.385	1.125	.289
Father’s age	−0.303	0.232	.630	−0.940	4.458	.035
Nationality of mother^c
China	1.436	2.928	.087	0.198	0.111	.739
Japan	−0.126	0.022	.882	−0.191	0.102	.750
Southeast Asian countries	0.295	0.123	.726	−1.335	5.045	.025
Perceived relationship with teacher	−0.426	29.805	.000	−0.277	25.118	.000
Likelihood ratio χ² (df)	64.753 (10) p = .000			51.636 (10) p = .000

Boy = 0, girl = 1.

Primary school = 1, middle school = 2, high school = 3.

Korea = 0, China/Japan/Southeast Asian countries = 1.

Discussion

The objective of this study is to investigate the bullying experiences of ethnic minority youth compared with Korean majority youth in the Gyeongnam Province of South Korea, and examine whether their perception of teachers is associated with their bullying experiences. Study results supported the hypotheses that ethnic minority youth would be more likely to be victimized than Korean majority youth and more vulnerable to relational victimization in particular. Our findings were consistent with another hypothesis that youth with Southeast Asian mothers would be more likely than the other two ethnic minority groups to be victimized. In addition, it was discovered that ethnic minority youth were less likely than Korean majority youth to be perpetrators in all three forms of bullying, and those with Southeast Asian mothers were the least likely perpetrators. Overall, youth with Southeast Asian mothers were more frequently victimized but less likely to bully their peers than their counterparts.

Ethnic minority youth in South Korea seem to be more likely to be bullied as they were born from at least one foreign parent. Some children of foreign parents struggling with language and cultural differences may have difficulty in developing age-appropriate language and adaptation skills, which would potentially place them at higher risk of marginalization and being bullied at school (D. H. Lee, 2010). Widespread prejudice toward foreign mothers in Korean society may be another factor contributing to racial bullying of ethnic minority youth. An imbalanced gender ratio of marriageable persons in South Korea results in Korean men, particularly those of low SES, seeking international matchmaking services to find foreign brides from less wealthy countries. South Koreans’ prejudice and discrimination against foreign wives are often transferred to their children, making them an easy target of violence and bullying. Ethnic minority youth also appear to be bullied partly due to their physical appearance. In line with prior research findings (e.g., Jun & Song, 2011; Oh, 2006), this might be a plausible explanation for our study result that youth with Southeast Asian mothers were more likely to be relationally bullied than the other ethnic minority youth.

Consistent with our hypothesis, perceived relationship with teachers was found to be associated with bullying experiences. When the other sociodemographic variables were controlled for, mothers’ country of origin had no significant effect on overall victimization, but the perceived student-teacher relationship did. Levels of positive perceptions of their teachers were also found to be negatively associated with the likelihood of overall perpetration. Our findings indicate that a school climate where teachers are perceived by their students to be fair and supportive would likely reduce both victimization and perpetration in South Korean schools, confirming that teachers can play a crucial role in suppressing school bullying (Eliot, Cornell, Gregory, & Fan, 2010).

The more frequent victimization in primary schools than middle and high schools implies that early intervention would be necessary. Given that the high proportion of minority youth in South Korea are primary school students; that youth’s awareness of the perspectives of others outside of the family, such as classmates, teachers, and other societal influences, distinctly increases during adolescence (Berzonsky & Adams, 2003); and that school bullying peaks during early adolescence (Kim, Boyce, Koh, & Leventhal, 2009), students in upper primary grades can be targeted for early intervention to be propitious. As for early intervention, our study findings reiterate the importance of teachers in addressing school bullying. Trust needs to be forged in the student-teacher relationship so that students can willingly seek help from their teachers when they are bullied or at risk of being victimized. Training teachers to enhance their multicultural sensitivity and to help minority students to feel more affiliated with other students will also contribute to the prevention of victimization among minority students.

The current study has a few limitations. Although we obtained a sufficiently large sample size for analysis, the use of convenience sampling limits generalizability. The results are not generalizable to minority youth in other regions of Gyeongnam Province. Future research with a larger probability sample from the province is needed to corroborate the findings of the current study. In addition, the small number of ethnic minority youth in school settings, which disallowed us to recruit an ethnic minority sample from schools in the same way we did the Korean majority sample, needs to be considered in interpreting some of our findings. For example, a main reason why minority youth in our study were more likely to be victimized than perpetrate bullying may be due to their small representation in the school context. Because of such a diminutive number, they may not be able to form their own ethnic minority in-group to protect them from being bullied or bully other minorities or Korean majority students in school. If they were not so dispersed across many schools, but concentrated in a smaller number of schools, being able to form visible ethnic in-groups, the result might have been different. Second, as bullying experiences were measured based on students’ memories of the past 3 months, there might be a recollection bias. Also, due to the cross-sectional design of this study, a causal inference about the significant association between the student-teacher relationship and the likelihood of victimization and perpetration must be cautioned. Nevertheless, this study provides comprehensive empirical evidence on the bullying experiences of ethnic minority youth in South Korea by covering both victimization and perpetration, and identifying a protective effect of student-teacher relationship. Study results make a significant contribution to international research on the bullying experiences of racial and ethnic minority youth, and inform the prevention of racial bullying at school in South Korea and other Asian societies that are becoming increasingly multicultural through international marriages.

Footnotes

Authors’ Note

ChaeYoung Lim is now affiliated with Gimhae College, Gimhae, South Korea.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea’s research grant (NRF-2012S1A2A1A01030921).

Author Biographies

Hwa-ok Bae, PhD, is a professor at the Department of Social Welfare, the Gyeongsang National University in Republic of Korea. She has published several articles on child maltreatment, school violence, and child poverty in Korea and abroad. She has also worked on governmental research projects on children’s rights and safety policy for children. She lectures child welfare, youth welfare, and children with disabilities.

Hyekyung Choo, PhD, is an associate professor at the Department of Social Work, National University of Singapore. She has been conducting extensive research and has published on adolescent health risk behaviors and cyber-wellness issues, particularly excessive gaming, and social support systems for adolescents from immigrant families.

ChaeYoung Lim, PhD, is a professor at the Department of Social Welfare Counseling, Gimhae College in Republic of Korea. She has published several articles on school violence, dating violence, and stress among Korean youth. She teaches child welfare, persons with disability, and Korean law and social welfare.

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