Cut it out
South Korean schoolchildren who claim they are being subject to impromptu and degrading haircuts by teachers for having overly long or unruly styles are fighting back.
Students here have traditionally been subject to tough official restrictions on hair length and style. Typically, this meant crew cuts for boys and ponytails or bobs for girls. Teachers, armed with clippers, would regularly administer their own tough justice on students deemed to be in breach of those regulations.
Evidence suggests that such humiliating treatment is still part of life in some schools. A website directed at teenagers has been inviting pupils to upload pictures of haircuts suffered at the hands of teachers, as part of a campaign calling for the lifting of restrictions on hair length in schools.
These range from a boy who had a strip shorn right across his head, and pictures of ragged and uneven chunks arbitrarily cut out of hairstyles, to photos of bruises and welts resulting from punishment meted out to offenders.
The protest against hair lengths goes beyond personal vanity and is being constituted in terms of individuality and freedom of expression in a country where schoolchildren have traditionally been ruled, often literally, with a rod. Young campaign organisers, who are planning a protest this weekend over the issue, claim that the hair restrictions impinge on their human rights. A petition has been submitted to the country's Human Rights Commission.
The subject even came up during a meeting this week between Education Minister Kim Jin-pyo and representatives of teenage advocacy groups, originally set up to discuss changes to university entrance exams.
'We have repeatedly said that regulations on hairstyles should not be accompanied by compulsory haircuts, but the problem hasn't been resolved yet,' Lee Joon-haeng told Mr Kim.
This is not the first time that the government has had to contend with such protests. Five years ago, the Education Ministry handed over responsibility for setting out dress codes and rules on hair length to individual schools, which now make decisions in consultation with local governments. But many schools still keep up the strict regulations of the past.
It is a reflection of how different today's South Korean schoolchildren are from their predecessors that they are no longer willing to put up with this authoritarian and harsh treatment. Indeed, the campaign for an end to restrictions on hairstyles has garnered considerable sympathy, with organisers claiming to have collected 70,000 signatures online.
