1. EDUCATING PARENTS WITH
CHILDREN WHO USE THE INTERNET
:KOREA-SPECIFIC APPROACH
Kyunghwa Lee, Ph.D
President
Parents’ Union on Net
Date: May 16, 2012
Venue: Golden Bay Beach Hotel,
Larnaca, Cyprus

2. PREVALENCE OF INTERNET USE IN KOREA
 World ranking 2nd (ITU, 2010)
 Average connection speed 1st (www.pingdong.com)
 98% of teens are internet users (2011)
 Approximately 78% of the Korean population use
the internet (KISA, 2010)
 Teens are 10% of all smart phone holders (about
2 million teens)

3. AT RISK TEENS(1)
10% of school-aged teens: internet game
addiction (KADO, 2011)
 Adult sites are a means for vulnerable teens’
sexual violence (Daegu, 2008)
 -In 2008 a central city in Korea, Daegu, experienced 8
3rd graders being sexuall attacked by several 6th
graders. The attackers stated to the police that they
just copied the obscene acts that they saw online.

4. AT RISK TEENS(2)
 Partners for one night stand is found at chatting
café (Association of Women, 2008).
 Runaway teens are involved in sex trafficking for
money, either alone or co-ed
 Negative reply is related to suicide
 Cyber-bullying is taking place on online cafe
 Anti-café about mom, teachers
 ‘Your mom is bad because she likes money’
 ‘Get together if you want to kill your homeroom
teacher’

5. AT RISK TEENS (3)
 IT makes it possible for teens to be the victim or the
offender
 Sexual harassment, sex trafficking
 IT makes teens illegal users
 Illegally downloading music, movie, and games
 IT makes teens abuse parents’ ID
 Parents allow kids to use their ID
 Kids have access to inappropriate contents, regardless of
ratings put in place to protect them
 IT makes teens addicted.
 Online games, chatting
 Recently teens who are member of ‘ocult’ club killed a
young man because of different views(2012.5)

6. PARENTS’ BELIEFS REGARDING IT
 Parents’ beliefs:
 technology is a convenient tool for child’s social
relations, daily schedule and for catching the social
flow.
 Smart phone is the best gift.
 Technology is doubtful for studying.
 Kids’ environment:
- TV watching and internet games are fun
- Afterschool programs focus on studying only
- Have easy internet access at home.

7. BACKGROUND OF PARENT EDUCATION
 Parent education programs containing well-known
good parenting ideas are not adequate in an IT
environment
 Parents have poor IT utilization skills
Stress about childrearing
 Parents have no knowledge about the traits of the
internet
- Kids’ stress from item theft or event fraud
- Free game programs have adult site ads.
- Parents’ ID enables kids to have access to improper games.
- Parents are embarrassed of cell phone data usage
overcharge

8. BACKGROUND OF CHILD PROTECTION
 Beliefs that encouraged Child Protection
 Internet is a sea of obscenity.
 Internet is a hot bed of sex trafficking.
 Internet is an illegal tool to download or upload
music, movies, and games
 Internet is insulting words,
 Internet is an uncontrollable tool.
 So, internet requires timely parenting as well as
policies

9. CHILD PROTECTION POLICY: GOVERNMENT
 Manufacture filtering software and disseminate to
home PCs for free.
 Block obscene webs and blogs
- 100~200 sites per month
 Install ‘shut down’ software on home PCs & cyber
cafés by law
- Prevention of Game addiction
- Education for kids and parents
 Attendance of education programs: parents’
participation gives their children’ volunteer work
credit .
 Request account deletion
 Trial and error case: awards were given to those
reporting illegal and harmful to minors
information(2003-2005)
This program is not implemented any more

10. CHILD PROTECTION POLICY:
ENTREPRENEURS
 Operation of Report center
 Keep Appointee for child protection by law
 Portal sites were held responsible to protect children. They
were expected to keep an appointee who was in charge of
this.
 Educate cyber ethics for parents & teens
 Operate Teens’ Zones
 Manufacture filtering software
 Use ‘adult authentication’
 Under age 19, they need parents’ consent before they have
access to adult sites

11. PARENTS’ UNION ON NET (P.U.N.)
 The only NGO which has been established under
the purpose for online child protection in Korea.
- Number of staff: 5(full time), 2(part time)
- Number of regional staff: 30
 Cooperating with government and industry for
funding in addition to donation
 Yearly budget: 150,000Euro +
 3 directions:
 Monitoring
 Educating
 Cultivating
 Major themes: cyber ethics, childrearing
techniques, sound behaviors

12. MAJOR ACTIVITIES OF P.U.N
 Information Communication Ethics
- Guide installment of filtering software
- Inform parents of item fraud, identity theft
 Educate parents about prevention skills of game
addiction
Support “shut down” software which stops game playing
from midnight to 6 AM.
 Global parenting network
 Humanity Forum for parents
 Global leadership training for teens in regional
child center.

13. WHAT P.U.N. DO
 Watch PUN’s video
 In 2011

14. PARENT EDUCATION ACTIVITIES OF P.U.N.
 P.U.N. implements giving lectures, both large-
and small-sized (# of persons in a class: 10 to 400)
- Themes: cyber ethics, prevention of game addiction,
danger of adult sites
- Personal information protection, copyrights, and
internet fraud such as item, giveaways, phishing
 P.U.N. implements monitoring smart phones,
websites, TVs, and internet games
 Violence, obscene, game rating, compliance of
shutdown program

15. KOREAN PARENTS’ SPECIFIC PARENTING(1)
 IT is just a tool for reduce kids’ stress
- For instance, game playing, chatting and surfing
 Parents design a full studying climate, sending
kids either to private learning center or local
child center.
 kids stay there until late night
 parents allow kids online access in spare time

16. KOREAN PARENTS’ SPECIFIC PARENTING(2)
 Parents are reluctant to communicate with kids
to resolve conflict when parents encounter
excessive or improper use of IT .
 Instead they prefer technological regulation, filtering
software
 Even when they communicate with kids, it is
perceived as nagging.

17. FUTURE DIRECTION FOR
PARENT EDUCATION
 Parent education for housewives needs to be
expanded for low-SES parents and parents who
work full-time.
 Fathers should be educated
 Parent education needs to emphasize the value of
learning skills
 Currently, learning for divergent thinking is not
encouraged, only studying for high academic grades.
 Variety of learning skills can give teens global
leadership awareness.

18. CONTINUED
 Parents need to be taught characteristics of IT
 Korean parents underestimate effect of IT utilization.
 Parent education needs to include humanity
issues.
 Concepts like digital native, prosumer which are
imposed on teens can make teens be inhumane or
technology dependent.
 Side effects: isolation, covert relation, power bloggers’
unethical business, information overload, ceaseless
surfing
 Help parents raise kids as sound humans who can
control technology as well as use it properly.