His son was targeted due to his rare disease.
Just now
Actor Kwon Oh Joong has left netizens heartbroken after revealing his son’s school bullying experience.
Kwon Oh Joong
On April 29, KST, Kwon appeared as a guest on KBS 1TV’s variety show Hwang Shin Hye’s Let’s Live Together (literal translation of title) and shared his son’s story. The actor revealed that his son Hyuk Jun was a victim of school violence for an entire year because of his rare disease.
Kwon explained that his son has a rare genetic condition that leads to muscle atrophy and developmental disabilities. Hyuk Jun is reportedly the first such case in Korea, and there are only ten known cases worldwide. The actor added that this disease is so rare, it doesn’t even have a name yet.
With his physical weakness, it was never easy for Hyuk Jun to make friends at school. Though he was mostly alone, Kwon said he never blamed his classmates since children are incapable of communicating or playing with those who can’t keep up with their pace. However, things took an ugly turn when a group of classmates ended up physically assaulting his son.
Kwon mentioned that when his son was in middle school, he randomly started refusing to go to school, saying someone had punched him in the stomach. Eventually, he went to meet the student who was allegedly hitting Hyuk Jun, but he bluntly denied it, claiming he was actually a friend who liked to play with Hyuk Jun often.
Kwon trusted the student’s explanation and even scolded his son when he got home. However, shortly afterward, he received a call from his son’s school informing him that his son was injured and needed to go to the emergency room. Upon arriving at the school, Kwon found his son with multiple stitches and a bleeding neck. That’s when he found out that his son had been bullied by five students for a year.
This group of students would act all friendly with Hyuk Jun, but then would hit his stomach, beat him with a stick, and make him crawl whenever he went to the bathroom. The student whom Kwon had previously talked to was also one of the perpetrators.
Kwon Oh Joong explained that his son sustained the neck injury because someone punched him when he had stuck his head out the window to look outside. As the window broke, the glass shards cut his skin. The incident was so serious that police got involved, and it was only then that the students confessed to their crime.
The actor lamented that his son’s perpetrators went unpunished. The main one was transferred, while the other four only had their classes changed. Since voluntary school transfer erases records of school violence from a student’s academic records, the chances of the main perpetrator facing any consequence for his action in the future are also thin.
After suffering through such an unfair situation, Hyuk Jun was the one who ended up getting ostracized by his classmates again. Kwon Oh Joong admitted that he only felt relieved after his son finished middle and high school, though the latter was not a violent experience. The actor added through tears that school violence doesn’t just break the child, but the parents as well. He also expressed his wish to see his son eventually lead a normal life just like everyone else.