Sunfull Internet Peace Movement

I am Byoung-chul Min, chairman and founder of the Sunfull Foundation in South Korea, founder of the BCM Educational Group, and a Distinguished Professor at Hanyang University. 

In 2007, I started the Sunfull Internet Peace Movement to counter cyberbullying, hate speech and human rights violations on the internet. Sunfull’s objective is to inspire everyone, especially youth to use positive language online and to post encouraging comments for the victims of online attacks.

I believe that encouraging students to experience posting positive online comments in support of those who are being attacked or suffering from misfortune is a form of character education, which teaches them to understand the harm hurtful comments have on others and that can cause real damage to another human being.

Through character education on the consequences of bullying, we can help shape the youth of the world into responsible netizens.

The internet with online comments, social networking, and instant messaging brings an ever increasing amount of online harassment. Online harassment has the power to hurt people, even to the point where people take their own life.

It is not enough to offer support programs for the targets of harassment (although that is important), nor does punishment deter people from posting malicious comments. 

The fundamental solution, I believe, to preventing online harassment and cyberbullying is to raise internet users’ awareness that cyberbullying is not something fun, but rather a serious problem with real consequences for real people.

The best way to do this is to promote a positive online culture by encouraging everyone to post positive comments. In having students post positive comments, they learn about the impact of online comments. We have been doing this successfully in Korea and I want to expand the Sunfull concept globally.

South Korea has one of the highest internet usage rates, which has led to issues such as cyberbullying and malicious comments through websites and social media. While Korea was one of the first to feel the pain of cyberbullying, it is happening everywhere.

According to a recent survey by the Korea Communications Commission, 26.9% of students experienced cyberbullying annually (either as a victim, a perpetrator, or both) and in fact-finding surveys on school violence, cyber violence is increasing yearly.

The problem is that people do not understand the gravity of this issue, which allows this kind of violence to become normalized. And the problem is not just confined to South Korea, but is being experienced in other parts of the world as well. An estimated 20% of children experience cyberbullying in many countries around the word. 

Cyberbullying disrupts students’ ability to learn and develop, and critically, cyberbullying can take place 24 hours a day. The messages are not just limited to school or the playground; the attacks can enter the student’s home. 

We are already working with people in Japan and the Philippines to expand Sunfull to those countries and it is my vision to take Sunfull globally.

The core purpose of the Sunfull Internet Peace Movement is to promote internet peace through the posting of positive comments that give hope to those who have been hurt by online malicious comments, hate speech, and defamation. 

The internet, due in part to the anonymous nature of how comments can be posted, and in part to the way malicious comments can be quickly shared has created, in effect, a battle zone where people look to hurt others.  The solution is to help people understand the impact of their actions. 

Our primary activity is to educate youth about the effects of online bullying through our classroom activities, lectures, and campaigns. We also create special comments pages where students can post supportive comments related to events around the world. 

We have been promoting the importance of educating students about cyberbullying by having students experience posting positive comments in Korea for 13 years and we have ongoing efforts in Japan and the Philippines, but the need for a Sunfull type program is global. We want to work through educators, organizations, and government officials in countries around the world to implement a program to actively address online bullying and other malicious activities.

While we encourage everyone to use positive comments, our primary focus is to have students post positive comments as a form of character education. Students are often being bullied online and they are the ones doing the bullying. By engaging with students and enabling them to learn about the impact of their words, it encourages them to alter their behavior.

We engage with students by working with schools. Currently, students in over 4,000 schools with the support of more than 4,000 teachers are participating in the Sunfull program (when schools are not closed due to the pandemic). It is through those teachers that we’re able to understand how our program is doing.

One of my most memorable experiences occurred in 2012, when I met the Ulsan superintendent of Education, and emphasized the seriousness of cyberbullying. I recommended bullying prevention education for his district’s students.

The district started Sunfull in all their schools. What was memorable was in a survey conducted six months after the program started, the rate of damage from verbal violence, which was 40.7 percent, decreased to 5.6 percent. It also resulted in a 64 percent decrease in school violence during the same period.

Our foundation aims to bring global issues of cyberbullying, hate speech, and human rights violations on the internet to light and to spread awareness on how to confront the same through character education for young people, and to lift people up through positive comments. 

While many countries have programs to support the victims of cyberbullying, most do not have educational programs to reduce cyberbullying. Some countries have laws to punish cyber-crimes, but these laws only address a crime that has already been committed; they do nothing to stop the crime from happening. That can only happen through character education.

In 2007, a famous Korean singer, U;Nee committed suicide because of malicious online comments that led to her suffering intense depression and stress. I was shocked that comments could affect someone to the point where they would consider taking their own life to escape the harassment. 

That’s when I had the idea to give an assignment to my university students to have each visit ten websites where celebrities were being attacked with malicious comments and to post a positive and encouraging comment. The assignment resulted in 5,700 encouraging comments being posted on the internet (I had 570 students at the time). 

During this process, I saw that my students recognized how words can hurt others while positive comments can counter the pain and might even save someone’s life. 

The positive aspect of my classroom assignment was recognized in news articles and, with the encouragement and support of people in the entertainment industry, who are a common target in Korea of malicious comments, as well as educators and parents, I decided to start a movement to encourage people to post positive comments online. 

That’s how the Sunfull Internet Peace Movement, where we encouraged students to promote a healthy culture online began.

I believe we should all give something to our community, however we can. This is important to me and something I covered in a book I wrote, A Good Person Will Succeed in the End (written in Korean). 

I still remember the shock I felt when I realized that cyber-attacks could destroy lives as had happened to the young singer in 2007 as well as others, both adults and children. 

While neither I nor anyone I am close to has suffered from online harassment, I always remember the time a student posted comments attacking me for not being prepared for class and being late, neither of which were true. This student simply wanted a higher grade, and while I understood what the student was trying to do, her comments still bothered me. 

Through the assignment I gave my students, I saw that positive messages, in addition to comforting those who are being attacked, have the power to change the thinking of those who are writing those positive messages. 

This is why I am passionate about Sunfull and believe that kind words have the power to change people. That is why I want to expand it to other countries.

My background in business, education, and starting and running the Sunfull Foundation has given me the skill set to successfully continue the work I have started to counter cyberbullying. 

Forty years ago, when I wrote my first book on learning English, I started my own successful English education business. And my book went on to sell more than one million copies. 

From 1981, for a span of 10 years, I hosted and presented English education programs on major Korea television networks, which contributed to Korea’s globalization by introducing practical English education. 

In addition to running my business, I went on to obtain a Doctorate of Education from Northern Illinois University and taught under-graduate students full-time for a number of years. 

Now, I have stepped down from the day-to-day operation of my business and teach just one course a semester (a course I created that teaches students how to follow their passions in developing their career goals). 

I have the time and experience to lead an effort, not just in Korea, but other countries as well, to counter cyberbullying.

The biggest obstacle I faced in starting Sunfull was Korean society’s indifference to other people’s pain. Many people did not take the problem of malicious comments seriously. In order to overcome this indifference, I traveled throughout the country for several years to give lectures and to meet with officials.

In order to start anti-bullying education in schools, I met with the Minister of Education multiple times and persuaded him in 2012 to make Sunfull internet activities one of the official volunteer activities for schools (students complete a set amount of volunteer hours for graduation). Receiving volunteer activities credit encouraged many students to participate in Sunfull.

Inspired by my success in gaining support for Sunfull activities in schools on a voluntary basis and the results we’ve seen, I am now working with the Korean National Assembly, as a private citizen, to pass a bill making it mandatory for all schools and workplaces to provide cyber violence prevention education, similar to the way schools and companies provide mandatory sexual harassment training. 

It is leadership in a business or an organization that sets the direction and guides the way. Leadership must have a vision for any business or organization to succeed, and leadership must support the employees or participants to ensure everyone feels a part of the effort and that they are able to grow within the company or the organization.

In 2007, while many people understood that online harassment was a problem, I was one of the first to see that an active approach to countering cyberbullying, hate speech and human rights violations on the internet, an internet peace movement, was needed. Because of my background in business, televised teaching, and as a university professor, I was well-known in Korea and was able to meet with many government officials. And through those meetings, I was able to motivate school officials to implement a Sunfull program in their schools.

At the same time that I was meeting with government officials to promote the idea of posting positive comments, I was also establishing the Sunfull Foundation as the organization to sponsor the Sunfull Internet Peace Movement and to raise funds through donations and grants.

Sunfull was the first organization to address cyberbullying using the innovative approach of encouraging students to post positive comments as a form of character education.

Activity-based character education, such as organizing litter pickup days where the experience of picking up litter causes young people to reconsider their actions the next time they have some trash, rather than dropping the trash on the street, they place it in a trashcan, is an effective way to teach good behaviors.

Many schools have been offering support programs, such as counseling, for those who have experienced cyberbullying, which is important, but those programs are not able to teach children to not bully in the first place. Education about the impact of cyberbullying is important and something we provide and are working to expand, but education combined with hands-on experience of posting positive comments is, I believe, the most effective program.

As of June, 2020, 730,000 people have joined and taken part in the Sunfull program. In a typical year, 50,000 new students participate in the Sunfull program, actively posting positive comments and participating in the Sunfull activities. I should note that this year, participation is lower due to the coronavirus related school closures.

With the recent start of Sunfull programs in the Philippines and South Africa, and the possible start of a program in India, we expect to see annual participation numbers of 75,000 to 100,000 (total) in the next few years, once life returns to something more normal after the pandemic.

Going forward, I want to expand in three areas:

1. Expand to other countries – Start Sunfull style character education in India, Cambodia, and the United States, (we are already speaking with people in India and Cambodia) in the near future and into Europe and Africa further down the road.

2. Expand our systems and materials – Expand our website to work in multiple languages and countries, enhance our system for tracking student comments, and develop online anti-cyberbullying courses using our anti-cyberbullying education material (currently the material is printed – we would need to create e-versions) and in multiple languages.

2A. Expand our system for tracking student comments – Currently in Korea, as noted in Question 14, students receive credit towards their community service hours requirement for posting positive comments. Students receive the credit, at a rate of one hour for every twenty positive comments, by posting a link to their comment at our website, and then their comments are verified by a teacher. We want to automate the process using an AI based system to validate the student’s comments.

3. Expand the Sunfull Club format – We introduced our club concept last year with 100 clubs using funding for one year from Google Korea that provides for a more active participation by students in a school with a coach- teacher. The Sunfull clubs act as program ambassadors to promote the Sunfull concept within the Club’s school as well as to other schools in the same district.

The current barriers for expanding Sunfull break down into three areas:

Money to pay for expansion – As we expand Sunfull, there are a number of areas that require a one-time expense to support expansion. These include things such as creating an online education system including video content (based on the experience with online learning due to the coronavirus, it is clear that video is an important component for online learning), enhancing our system for tracking student comments, expanding our internet technology to support activity in other countries, and the cost of promoting Sunfull in other countries.

Money to pay for continuing operations – As we expand our operations in Korea and in other countries, this increases our annual expenses and we will need to identify and secure continuous funding to support these activities going forward

Assistance, introductions, and connections to promote the Sunfull concept in new countries (a marketing campaign) – While people from other countries are hearing about our Sunfull concept through news articles and are contacting us with questions, I would like to be more proactive in expanding Sunfull, which will require a way to identify and access the correct people to implement our ideas.

As a non-profit, non-government organization, we are continuously seeking new avenues of funding, which is why we are applying for The Elevate Prize. Up until last year, fund raising was something that I, as the chairman of the Sunfull Foundation, along with our board of directors, put a significant amount of our time into seeking funding. This year, we did hire someone to work part-time on fund raising.

Currently, we are working with:

Google Korea – In 2019, Google entered into a partnership with the Sunfull Foundation in recognition of the need to create a healthy internet culture. They sponsored 100 Sunfull clubs and their activities for internet etiquette, character education, awareness campaigns, and contests.

The Life Insurance Association of Korea – The LIAK has been conducting a life-saving campaign and has supported academic research over the past three years on the impact of the Sunfull campaign and Sunfull's activities on students' personalities.

Lotte Homeshopping – Korea's leading online shopping mall operates its own call centers, and, after recognizing the problems of the socially disadvantaged such as telemarketers and salespeople, it joined the Sunfull Movement. From 2019, Lotte Homeshopping, with the Sunfull Foundation, has held a video contest for telemarketers and we have jointly conducted a campaign to defend the rights and interests of customer service workers.

National Election Commission Korea – This past April, the NECK sponsored the Sunfull Fair Election Signing Campaign under the auspices of the National Election Commission, in which candidates pledged to face off only with policies and without spreading malicious comments and false information. 136 candidates made the commitment and 1,500 citizens participated by posting supportive comments of this campaign.

Korean National Assembly – 298 out of 300 lawmakers from 20th National Assembly (from May 30, 2016 through May 29, 2020) signed a pledge to conduct parliamentary activities in good language.

To accomplish our core purpose to promote peace on the internet and our primary activity to educate youth about the effects of online bullying, we use a combination of volunteer and paid staff and a modest office space from which to operate. We cover our normal operating costs through grants and individual donations.

We also will receive grant money from companies operating in Korea as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts that are earmarked for special purposes in line the interest of the companies issuing the grant that we use to fund special activities.

We are currently developing a cyberbullying awareness educational package that could be sold to schools and businesses if the Korean government enacts a regulation requiring annual cyberbullying awareness training, as is currently being done for sex harassment awareness training. If the legislation is enacted, this could provide Sunfull with a revenue stream that would be able to support our other operations.

Our current business model is to support our operations through grants and donations, which we have been doing since our founding in 2007.

To sustain our operations in Korea, long-term, we are working with the Korean National Assembly to enact a regulation mandating annual cyberbullying awareness training in schools and work-places, similar to the way Korea requires annual sexual harassment awareness training. If we are successful in having a regulation enacted, we will be uniquely positioned to provide the training and course material, which we would do for a fee that would cover the cost of the training and materials, and would provide funds for our operation.

As we expand into other countries, we are looking forward to those branches raising the necessary funds to support their local operations and to help defray the costs for our website and program materials.

We have been raising funds through grants and donations to support our ongoing operation since our founding in 2007.

Grants and donations received in 2019

Grants

Google Korea – KR₩55,000,000 — US$45,833

Life Insurance Association of Korea – KR₩85,000,000 — US$70,833

Lotte Home shopping – KR₩50,000,000 — US$41,667

Ministry of Public Administration and Security – KR₩40,000,000 — US$33,333

KT – KR₩20,000,000 — US$16,667

Grants total: KR₩250,000,000 — US$208,333

Donations

KR₩84,109,745 — US$70,091 from 93 donors

Total funds raised in 2019: US$278,424

Funding for ongoing operations

As an ongoing operation, we anticipate that we will be able to continue to raise funds each year to support our currently planned activities through grants and donations:

Five-Year Expected Fund Raising:

2020  US$250,000

2021  US$300,000

2022  US$320,000

2023  US$345,000

2024  US$360,000

Funding for program expansion

In addition to our existing programs in Korea, we want to expand to other countries as cyberbullying and human rights violations via the internet are global problems.

To accomplish our planned expansion, we estimate that we need to raise between US$300,000 and US$500,000 based on:

• Create an online, multi-language education site to provide cyberbullying awareness training — US$ 210,000 over a three-year period
• Build upon our existing system for tracking student positive comment posting as part of a character education program — US$140,000 over a two-year period
• Expand the Sunfull program to other parts of the world — US$150,000

2020 Fund Revenue Expenditure Plan (USD)

Note: Our 2020 plan is based on raising slightly less monies this year than last year, based on the impact of the coronavirus to business and people’s lives.

Amounts are US dollars

[Income] 250,000 total

  200,000 Grants 

  50,000 Donations 

[Expenditures] 250,000 total

   Project Cost (120,000)

      45,000 Sunfull anti-cyberbully training

      50,000 Sunfull Club support

      25,000 Campaign promotion 

   Operating Cost (130,000)

      25,000 for rent 

      80,000 staff costs  

      25,000 other expenses (e.g. website)

We are applying for The Elevate Prize as we believe your organization can help us with understanding how to better promote our idea, to both directly help us and to introduce methods we are not aware of.

We are also looking to The Elevate Prize to help us become more self-sustaining in our operation. As we expand, it is important that we are able to maintain our activities.

And we are looking to The Elevate Prize to provide financial support to cover the costs associated with expanding our program.

The primary limitations to expanding our Sunfull concept are funding and awareness. As we have expanded our program, we have been careful to be at least partially confident in securing ongoing funding to maintain our program at an expanded level.

As more groups become aware of what we are doing and we gain their support, we are able to expand into new areas, such as we started doing last year with our Sunfull Clubs, which we did with the support of Google Korea.

Expanding to other countries will require expanding our internet website and tracking system for public service credits for schools that support such activities.

This is why we want to work with groups that can assist with funding, help us expand into new areas of the world, and increase awareness of what we are doing and its associated benefits.

As our core purpose is to promote peace on the internet, we would most like to partner with organizations that are connected to our area of focus:

·        Internet related technology businesses

·        Local, state, and federal education departments

·        Funding organizations that share our vision

Internet related technology businesses – We would want to partner with technology companies to expand our reach (promotion), possible technology support, and grants for special projects.

Local, state, and federal education departments – We would want to partner with educational departments as promoting anti-cyberbullying programs for schools is our primary activity and a potential source of funding.

Funding organizations that share our vision – We would want to partner with organizations that are focused on working towards peace for funding support and to co-work on peace initiatives. An important component of the internet is communication between people. If we are not consciously working toward an internet where people co-exist peacefully, but rather an internet were everyone is attacking everyone else, including our neighbors, our fellow citizens, and the people of other countries, it will be impossible for leaders, even if they want to, to achieve peace. Peace is something that starts with all of us, and a good place to start is to post a positive message for someone else on the internet.