Senior students who continued abuse for about two years, including burying a club junior in a sandpit with only the neck exposed and wrapping the entire body in packing plastic, were sentenced to prison terms.
On the 8th, Gwangju District Court Criminal Division 11 single-judge Director General Kim Sung-Joon sentenced two 21-year-old men, including a man identified as A, to one year and two years in prison, respectively, on charges including violating the Act on the Aggravated Punishment, etc. of Specific Violent Crimes.
A 20-year-old man who was indicted together was fined 3 million won.
A and the others were indicted on charges of repeatedly assaulting B, a first-year junior in a school club, with a steel pipe, wooden club, and fists from June 2022 for about two years while they were attending a vocational high school in the Gwangju area.
They also dug a hole in the school wrestling field's sandpit and buried B's body below the neck for about 30 minutes. It was found that they tied B's arms and legs to a chair, put a dust mask on, and discharged a fire extinguisher.
The harassment continued, including wrapping B's entire body in packing plastic and placing the person on top of a locker for about 30 minutes, or throwing a cellphone to the floor and breaking the screen.
They were said to have continued these acts because B was small in stature and introverted.
The court sentenced them to prison while not taking them into custody in court, considering that the defendants were juveniles at the time of the crime, had no prior criminal record, and needed to be given an opportunity to compensate the victim.
Among the co-defendants, one person who was forgiven by the victim was fined 3 million won instead of a prison term.