Word: ganging
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...Song's ordeal is part of a rash of brutal incidents that have pushed school violence and gang activities to the top of the national agenda in South Korea. In a chilling report released at a police-sponsored symposium last month, high school teacher Jong Sae Yong claimed that as many as 400,000 kids?5% of the national student body?belong to loosely affiliated gangs. The gang members call themselves iljin ("top rankers") and are involved in organized bullying, extortion and sometimes sex crimes. The Education Ministry says Jong's findings are exaggerated, but officials established a task force...
...Iljin gangs are typically part extortion ring and part social club, according to Jong, who interviewed more than 200 teens over five years to prepare his independent study of the phenomenon. Senior gang members use younger iljin to intimidate still younger children into giving them money to finance dates and rowdy, beer-fueled parties. Jong, who teaches at Jeon Nong high school in Seoul, says gang members use the Internet to organize regional and even national networks. One favorite pastime: the so-called "fainting game," in which kids derive an oxygen-deprivation rush from strangling each other until they nearly...
...high school high jinks can be far more menacing. Iljin deal harshly with anybody who betrays the gang or tries to quit, Jong says. Of particular concern to parents is the rise of sexual violence. Prosecutors say the number of rapes committed by high school kids nearly tripled from 2001 to 2003, the last year for which statistics are available. Last week a judge ordered 10 teenagers charged with repeatedly gang-raping a 14-year-old girl in the southern city of Miryang to stand trial in juvenile court. Most iljin are decent kids in need of guidance, Jong insists...
...Education Ministry plans to set up programs to teach students otherwise, and is looking at ways to improve the exchange of information about problem kids between parents, police and teachers. Meanwhile, police are granting amnesty to gang members who turn themselves in and confess to crimes by April 30?theft of less than $1,000 and beatings from which the victim recovered in less than three weeks will be forgiven. More than 2,500 students have taken advantage of the offer so far. That's a start. But experts are worried that hardened gang members won't be caught, partly...
...example, it turns out that drug dealers don't really make so much money after all. Levitt and a colleague who had obtained copies of a Chicago gang's accounting books found that street-corner crack dealers in the 1980s made less than minimum wage. They stayed in the job because they aspired to rise through the ranks and make six figures--which only a few top leaders ever achieved. In other words, the authors explain, "the gang's wages [were] about as skewed as wages in corporate America...