hankyoreh

Police officers patrol at a high school in Seoul to prevent graduates from celebrating too raucously by ripping up their school uniforms, pelting flour and being completely naked after their graduation ceremony on Tuesday. Some 20 officers and a patrol car were dispatched to this school on the graduation day.

Scenes of graduation in middle and high schools across the country this year were a stark contrast from last year. Schools, the police and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) have vowed to conduct a large-scale juvenile guidance campaign. The police said they would mobilize 47,000 police officers during the graduation season from Feb. 8 through 17.

The shock of last year’s aggressive and violent graduation celebrations brought on the tight restrictions. In several areas, students who graduated from middle and high schools took off their clothes and posed naked for photos, marched in the streets clad only in their underpants, pelted each other with flour and eggs, ripped girls’ clothes off using scissors and razor blades, and poured mayonnaise and corn syrup on their bodies.

Pelting flour and ruining school uniform was considered a protest against Japanese authorities during Japanese colonial rule from 1910 through 1945. In recent times, students have expressed their sense of freedom in that manner, but the performance has become increasingly aggressively.

As a result, some parents have stated that this is in turn an excessive response to dispatch police officers to all schools on the graduation day.

(Photo by Kim Tae-hyung, Story by Park Bo-mi)