Korean autistic persons facing systemic stigmatization from middle education schools: daily survival on the edge as a puppet.
Korean autistic adults say middle-school bullying was culture-wide and blamed on them—plan self-advocacy lessons and written anti-bully protocols now.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Kim et al. (2024) talked with Korean autistic adults about their time in middle school. The adults shared stories of daily bullying and how teachers and schools did little to help.
The interviews were open-ended. People could speak freely about hurtful events, blame they received, and how this blocked later jobs or college.
What they found
Bullying was not just kid-to-kid. Adults said the whole school culture allowed it. High grades and 'normal' behavior were prized. Autistic students were called broken puppets.
When they asked for help, staff often said the victim was the problem. This left scars that lasted long after classes ended.
How this fits with other research
Horgan et al. (2023) reached a similar view. Their review of teen voices also calls mainstream secondary school 'socially overwhelming.' Yoon adds Korean cultural pressure to that picture.
MByiers et al. (2025) give a next step. They taught five autistic kids to report, state disapproval, and walk away from mock bullying. The small study shows self-protection skills can be trained.
Loo et al. (2024) in Singapore add another layer. Autistic adults there hid their traits to dodge bullying. Korea and Singapore differ, yet both reveal stigma pushing people to mask who they are.
Why it matters
If you serve Korean families, expect school reports that blame the child. Build a safety plan that includes self-advocacy lessons, teacher education, and written protocols for bullying claims. For any student, record every incident and role-play safe responses. Push the team to treat bullying as a systems problem, not a student deficit.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Add a 'bully report' role-play to your next social-skills session: client states the problem, says 'That's not okay,' and walks to the designated safe adult.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Korean autistic persons who have endured an integrated secondary education system have been exposed to school bullying, causing trauma and stigma to them. It also blocks them from entering a tertiary education system and a decent work, resulting in a lower quality of life. However, research on how it affects autistic persons has not yet been conducted in Korea. Fourteen adult autistic persons in the Republic of Korea participated in the semi-structured focused group interviews. Their conversations were analyzed through qualitative coding. The interview results show the rare voice of Korean autistic people. Although interviewees experienced physical, verbal, and sexual violence against them during the secondary education period, they could not get substantial assistance from schools and society. Interviewees agreed that bullying is inherent in the secondary education system of Korea, even in Korean culture. They experienced the cause of bullying being attributed to them as victims rather than perpetrators, and impunity is given to the bullying assailants. Early analyses of this article confirm that such experiences are combined with the sociocultural climate of elitism, meritocracy, and authoritarianism in the Republic of Korea. The study confirmed that the autistic person’s bullying experience does not come from the social inability of autistic people but the “profound” competition and discriminative atmosphere of the society. The result urges further studies on the bullying experience of East Asian autistic persons and the construction of Korean intervention strategies to prevent school violence against Koreans with disabilities, especially autistic pupils.
Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2024 · doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1260318