President Lee raps ugly graduation ceremonies

By Lee Chi-dong
SEOUL, Feb. 17 (Yonhap) -- President Lee Myung-bak called Wednesday for better
education of middle and high school students to end the growing problem of ugly
or even violent graduation rites.
Lee's appeal came after dozens of shocking pictures surfaced of some middle
school students, stripped naked, holding their own ritual outside their school
after the official graduation ceremony.
In other footage spreading on the Web, some students pelt flour or hurl eggs at
their peers while others, dressed only in underwear, even stride streets in group
or tear the school uniforms of other students.
"The meaning of graduation ceremony, which students should attend with the mind
of gratitude and hope, is going in a wrong direction," the president said at his
weekly meeting with senior secretaries, according to his spokeswoman Kim Eun-hye.
"It is a serious disease in our society as well as a bad thing morally and
educationally," he added.
Lee, however, was opposed to police intervention into the problem, saying it is
not a criminal case but a matter to be resolved by students and schools.
He added teachers and principals of relevant schools are also responsible for the
problem as they failed to deal with the social issue.
Lee ordered more efforts to normalize graduation ceremonies.
Some claim such unsightly rites are part of the country's tradition that dates
back to the Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
Decades ago, Korean students wore mostly black uniforms, a symbol of the Japanese
navy. Pelting flour at school uniforms is an expression of liberation, they say.
Others argue that the tradition is more related to South Korea's one-size-fit-all
education in the 1960s and 1970s, when students wanted to vent out their anger
over the system through the graduation ceremony.
lcd@yna.co.kr