Challenging how you see bullying in East Asia in 25 minutes

Bullying in East Asia is a big deal, and the rates of bullying there might even be the worst in the world. At least - that's what we've come to think. But there is more to this story than meets the eye. And no one is talking about it.

0:00 Intro
1:30 How East Asia understands bullying
2:39 ty Opera!
3:58 A history of bullying + cases
12:33 Comparing bullying in East Asia to the West
17:31 Addressing the perception gap
23:08 Conclusion

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Detailed references & my thoughts!

All the papers I read in researching this video were so eye opening but if I could only recommend two (I couldn't cut this down to one) it would be Wong and Ahuvia's paper on interpreting social events and Rappleye and Komatsu's paper in examining the bias exhibited in international reports on bullying in East Asia. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh when I told you my jaw dropped at both their findings and conclusions !!! And of course the PISA/OECD reports are all down below if you want to see the data for yourself!

Academic references

Ji, L., Zhang, W. and Jones, K. Children’s experience of and attitudes towards bullying and victimization: A cross-cultural comparison between China and England. In: Smith PK, Kwak K, Toda Y, eds. School Bullying in Different Cultures: Eastern and Western Perspectives. Cambridge University Press; 2016:170-188.

Zhang, W., Chen, L. and Chen G. Research on school bullying in mainland China. In: Smith PK, Kwak K, Toda Y, eds. School Bullying in Different Cultures: Eastern and Western Perspectives. Cambridge University Press; 2016:113-132.

Other References

2018 PISA report

2022 PISA report

BGM:
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Tags:
‌video essay, cultural commentary, social commentary, internet analysis, analysis video, bullying, east asia, china, korea, japan, sociocultural essay, east asian culture, mental health, social dynamics, school bullying, the glory, lookism, a silent voice, bullying in korea, bullying in japan, bullying in china, ijime, wangta, qifu, kdrama, manhwa, true crime, edvasian, rotten mango, salem tovar

[WTER]

It makes sense that the number of victims is smaller, but that is largely because the form of bullying is more collectist. Fewer victims doesn't mean fewer bullies.

[evildoesnotsleep-xb]

Bullying is not an act is a culture, if you look down on someone poorer than you, your child will do the same

[stephanielim]

The reason why the Philippines has the Highest of reports being bullied it's because both the bully and the one being bullied usually always ends up being in the principal's office due to fighting and being stabbed by a pencil. most Filipinos have a fuck around and find out attitude that's why most of those being bullied usually ends up fighting back, and our classmates are not that hesitant to report bullying because of our culture, which sympathize greatly to the downtrodden.

[jigglycarollo]

I've always heard that when it comes to Japan: The crime rate is low, but the crimes that do happen are the most heinous. And I think that's pretty visible in that low rate of bullying, but the public perception of it being worse. Because when it happens, it's so much worse than what we understand. We think of getting stuffed into lockers, meanwhile these kids are getting psychological torture.

[MrGillb]

relational bullying isn't even acknowledged in the US, you just mysteriously get denied opportunities and people tell you to just try harder.

[Alee]

The interesting thing about the Korean context is that 왕따 doesn’t mean bully - it’s the person getting bullied. When you talk about the bully, you say they 왕따시키다, or “to make someone else an outcast” rather than “they are a bully.” There’s probably some interesting cultural stuff to unpack with how the language focuses on the victim rather than the perpetrator.

[floragcaldeira]

This week a 13 yo died here in Brazil after being assaulted by classmates. I feel like we only talk about it when it ends with tragedy.

[genepozniak]

In the US, bullying among males is primarily physical, though they use humiliation on the Internet; while it's relational among females, who also add such humiliation on the Internet. Studies of bullying have mostly been focused on males because adults can easily understand violence, while relational bullying is (or was) considered too complicated to deal with.

[kjracz]

Filipino here. The thumbnail got me interested. Bullying exists in many forms here, from kids fooling around to gender hate. I experienced being on the receiving end of it back in high school, however, it rarely heavily impacts a victim's social life or future social life. It's cultural, you know. Filipinos are an outgoing bunch. Also, not only your parents & adults, your peers are more likely to point out and scorn you for being a bully instead of being quiet about it. Also, as minors, your own parents will beat you up for being a bully, and the victims themselves often fight back. But this was years ago, social media pretty much made it worse.

[annacherrryyyy]

I grew up in Japan and was heavily bullied. I was the only foreign child in the entire city, and happened to be placed in the most vicious class and school. I have lifelong issues with acceptance and confidence thanks to the ijime I experienced.

And the reported bully numbers, are so not accurate to reality. Kids are TERRIFIED to report ijime. The few times I reported it, it got so much worse. So. Much. Worse. And anyone getting bullied knows that. The closed classroom environment ensures that the bullies know who reported. They have all the tools needed to retaliate and they do.

And my teacher told my parents that I am a liar and need to be punished for my dishonesty. For reporting on how I was bullied. For showing her my destroyed school supplies and ripped clothes.

Id like to add that the exclusionary tactics that are prevalent in the schools of Japan are just as ubiquitous in all levels of the society. I will never be accepted. I will never been seen as Japanese, despite being born and raised here and neverbhaving lived anywhere else. Even people who are "allies" will slip up and use exclusionary language when talking about me, because they dont register that it's segregating.

I have never been able to explain what I went through well, so thank you for this video. Everything you talked about with the Japanese classroom dynamics is exactly what I suffered for 9 years of compulsory education, and 26 years of life here.

[laovvi]

While it's interesting to compare and contrast bullying found in different cultures, it's important to note that one being worse or more frequent doesn't make the other better or less worse.

[Josh_Quillan]

I think the fact the PISA survey is about students _self-reporting_ being bullied, rather than _third parties observing_ bullying is 100% the key here and the reason the PISA data is effectively worthless. I taught in Japan for 10 years and everything I understood from my students who were in school, company workers and from the school teachers and managers I taught suggested to me that what I would personally call fully endemic and institutionalised bullying, most Japanese people would just call a normal day at school/work. Even if they weren't being bullied they lived under fear of bullying, making every decision on the basis of what others might think or how they might react. I don't know about your cultural background, Aini, but my observation from living in and observing Japan and trying to understand people's lives was that Japanese people's first reaction to criticism is often to close ranks, conceal and deny the problem and hope people stop asking - we can see this in the industrial scandals at Olympus, Takata, Nissan and others. In the case of Olympus, the whole thing was only exposed when a British executive received a promotion and, having differing cultural values, felt he was obliged to expose the routine, systematic concealment of billions of yen in losses. Carlos Ghosn, taking over Nissan, only saved the company from bankruptcy by ending wasteful practices that Japanese executives chose to ignore or downplay. To me this low bullying rate data is exactly the same thing - institutions burying the problem rather than solving it because that's what they are designed to do.
They don't self-report bullying because that is standing out, and invites further hammering down. As someone who was bullied in school, the last thing I wanted was to do something that might make things worse - and a bunch of bullied schoolkids don't understand PISA sampling methodology, they don't trust or understand that data is being handled anonymously, telling someone is telling someone, it's a risk. I doubt anyone is tampering with the data that is reported - but I'm sure that what is or is not reported is at least a bit massaged, if not significantly manipulated before it is handed over to surveyors.
The fact that the OECD survey basically acknowledges all this in the statement at 22:09 is, I think, the real point. "How are we supposed to trust this data? "WE AREN'T. That is PISA telling us that they themselves don't trust it. If you believe PISA's stats overall and acknowledge it has a good reputation, I don't see how you can then discount their own analysis of the validity of their own data. They have no reason to perpetuate a stereotype unless they believe it to be true. Ultimately I feel the prevalence and enduring popularity of bullying as a topic for fiction produced within and for these cultures indicates that it resonates with people; I find that a much more reliable source than a self-reported survey on a topic where reporting that thing has negative consequences on the sample population.

[minor edits for clarity and to further highlight that bullying in Japan is at least as much about work as it is school, if not more]

[Radiance]

As someone who grew up in the US, the idea of staying with the same group of students and the same teacher all day every day is horrifying. Obviously if your teacher and peers treat you well it's great, but if you're the kid who gets bullied, this means you never get a break. And if the teaching style doesn't work for you, it affects every subject, not just one. Even if bullying is less common, it's inescapable, and the fact that many of the survey respondents saw introspection as a possible solution may indicate that they blame themselves for the way they're being treated. All of that is a recipe for a terrible ending to the story.

[julia]

"Less common" does not mean "less of a problem" though! If 39, 4% of kids in the UK report being bullied, isn't being bullied getting so common the victims are barely a minority? Compare that to the isolation of being the only one being bullied in a class, or even in a school. It could definitely be said that getting bullied in a setting where it's rarer would have a larger impact on self-image.

[Lonaticus]

18:30, that's because Korean and Japanese students don't report it.
Bullying happens, a lot!
I lived in Korea for 5 years and the stuff I've heard from Korean friends who had kids in school and from English teachers in Hagwons is harrowing.

[EZXSniperZzz]

Bullying is a tricky topic to study accurately based on my life as an Asian American. Up until I got therapy, I didn't know I was bulled by my parents and friends, let alone know that I was a bully to others too. I doubt my parents saw it as that, and I know my friends didn't see it as that until the whole friend group died to toxicity.

Meeting some other Asian Americans in the college associations really opened my eyes to another level of bullying. The shit they would say and do was unbelievable. I doubt they would ever consider themselves bullies.

All that is to say, I doubt the physical nature of bullying in dramas was ever accurate. Some of those Manhwas have whole ass corporations and adults roaming in high schools.

I quite frequently SEE bullying in the west. Hell, some people in the U.S. thinks it "builds character."

I do wonder if a lot of emotional/rational bullying is under reported due to it not being perceived as bullying. Which was my life growing up.

[dummypumpkin]

As a student from the philippines it isn't surprising that we're quite high on that list, because we aren't exactly quiet when someone or us ourselves are getting bullied, so I think that's why it's quite high on the list because everyone and i mean everyone I know has been bullied and it's not as severe as the on in the states, where they bring a gun and shoot at the ones that did them wrong.

The bullying culture here in the philippines is quite tame, as it's not everyday that we can see a student killing themselves because of bullying, but not to say it hasn't happened before, I do just think students here is more open in talking about bullying is because you're not going to be shamed or put on a stage if you snitch on you're aggressor... Because everyone has experienced some form of it in their life... Like me and my friends talk about things like this when we're walking home. So it isn't a very controversial topic here and I think that's why so many students are willing to admit to it or talk about it.

And the way these bullying get handled here is quite good, as the principals, teachers and students are involved (w/ the parents too of course). It very rarely results to expulsion or even suspension, as they can all sit down and talk like adults, the ones in charge here actually go to the root of the problem instead of looking at the surface level story, and usually take statements from other students (atleast at my school they do that) and even cyber bullying is not permitted...

I just hope that we can eradicate bullying but that's just not possible, as there's always a divide whether it's class or looks. I just hope that when I eventually have a child and send her to school, bullying wouldn't be so rampant.

[roanred]

To correct an assumption you made, social bullying among women and girls was a popular issue in the early 2000s and 2010s. Westerners do not associate bullying with violence. They associate male bullying with violence. I learned this years ago as a teenager. Social or relational bullying was explored in movies like Mean Girls, Odd Girl Out, and the Heathers (a much older movie). I am only naming a few but there are definitely other shows and movies that display this type of bullying.

[jasonquigley]

I don't think it's correct to say that westerners think bullying is primarily physical. Any time I've discussed this with acquaintances, everyone has always agreed that verbal/psychological bullying was much worse then physical bullying. Likewise, when we discuss "workplace bullying" (a concept related to the more commonly discussed school bullying), it's almost exclusively

One of the slogans around bullying that are repeated commonly throughout English speaking countries is "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never harm me", which A) shows that the form of bullying that people are most concerned about is verbal bullying and B) Shows a particular cultural response to bullying IE you must not respond to it, rise above it and maintain your dignity. The usual advice given to anglophone students about bullying is to ignore it until it goes away, which may in fact be part of the problem in anglophone countries. In a sense, the bullies often "get away with it". Part of the problem is the alternative for students is "snitching", which is not only condemned by other students, but likely by parents and teachers as well ("Nobody likes a snitch...")

I'm Irish, and my perception has always been that bullying is more common in the UK/Ireland then in East Asia, despite the mass hysteria you get from Asian media. I hear stories about bullying in Asia and I think "that's just normal where I grew up...".


A thought provoking video, as usual.

[cringeyetfree]

i definitely had the wrong perception of bullying in east asia going in but i'm not surprised that the uk does so badly in these studies. british schoolboy culture has a long history of being crude and abrasive and it's become so instilled there that often what would be called bullying elsewhere gets dismissed as "just banter"/"just a bit of fun"/etc. by bullies, school staff and even sometimes victims

good work as always, also props to presage for that genius japan/england flag graphic