Girl claims she bullied to prevent becoming a victim herself

"I thought I would be bullied if I don`t do it first."

A 16-year-old high school girl in Gyeonggi Province was interrogated by police in October for allegedly verbally abusing her classmates to an extreme degree. In addition to habitually using abusive language, she was known to spread malicious rumors about her classmates, two of whom had to temporarily drop out of school to get psychiatric help.

Ironically, the bully herself was bullied by her school friends for more than five years while in elementary school.

"I was discouraged because I`d been bullied for a long period of time," she said. "As I bullied friends who looked no better than I did, others no longer disrespected me."

Her malicious backbiting merely elevated her self-esteem temporarily, however, causing her to be ostracized as a chronic gossiper. When a flu bug spread at her school, others blamed her as the source of the virus.

Another rumor had it that she was pregnant with the baby of a boy attending another school nearby.

Suffering from depression, the student skipped school almost every day this month. "When one is picked as a target for bullying, everyone else competes to bully the person under a mob mentality," she said. "I hope we understand that when you bully others, you could become a victim, too."

neo@donga.com yhkang@donga.com