The Center for Human Rights (Director: Park Kwi-Cheon) held a special lecture titled “Stop!! Cyberbullying” given by Kim Sung-hye, chief officer of the Counseling Service Headquarters at the Foundation for Preventing Youth Violence (FPYV), as a preventive education of cyber violence, on December 5 (Wednesday) at the Little Theater in the Student Union. Cyberbullying refers to behavior that bullies a targeted person continuously and repeatedly using emails, mobile phones, social network services, etc. in the cyberspace.

Director Park said in her greetings, “Recently cyberbullying is getting more serious within the university campus, and the victims are suffering for 24 hours anytime, anywhere and have a hard time in managing their daily lives.” She added, “I hope this lecture will be a forum for thinking about how to prevent and resolve the problem of human rights violation in the cyberspace.”

Kim, chief officer of the counseling institution, started her lecture by pointing out the seriousness of cyberbullying, saying “Cyber violence occurs with significant frequency among those in their 20s and 30s and it is developing more and more intellectually.” She clarified the types of cyberbullying, which include: flaming, posting a flood of insults and slanders; cyber harassment, sending offensive and abusive messages; defaming, spreading comments or pictures in order to damage the reputation of someone; masquerading, spoiling someone’s reputation or relationships by posting messages as another user; outing, publicly saying sensitive personal information about individuals; exclusion, intentionally and cruelly singling out a person from online group; and cyberstalking, continuously swearing, threatening, or expressing excessive good feeling through online.

In addition, the chief officer mentioned that cyberbullying is a serious problem because it is a kind of a means of violence characterized by rapidly spreading and collectively, anonymously and secretly occurring, which hurts victims as painful as their normal life is paralyzed. She suggested the ways to deal with those cyberbullying attacks as follows: first of all, To recognize you are cyberbullied and avoid contacting the attacker rather than avenge yourself on him (her); To ask for help if the cyberbullying continues; To secure evidence such as capturing relevant proofs; To let family and friends know you are cyberbullied while reporting it to the relevant institutions; and To request a website administrator to delete or blind the relevant postings. Chief officer Kim repeatedly emphasized, “Above all, if you react the same way when you are cyberbullied, you can also become an attacker. So you need to turn down the access and preserve the evidence.”

Meanwhile, the Center for Human Rights was established last July to protect human rights and improve rights and interests for Ewha family. The Center is helping Ewha members who experienced violation of human rights overcome the damage and enjoy healthy life. Additionally, through human rights education, education on sexual harassment and violence and public relations campaign, the Ewha institution is trying to make a learning environment and comfortable workplace without victims and attackers.