The number of runaway adolescents is rapidly increasing according to a survey conducted by the Korea Youth Counseling Institute, which indicated 15.3% of teenagers have run away from home. Among 18,422 runaways reported to the police last year, the number of girls at 11,512, is much higher than that of boys at 6,930. Experts on the youth issues estimate that the number of teenagers who left home exceeds 100,000, given those who voluntarily leave school number 70,000-80,000 per year.

About half of the runaways (48.9%) cite conflicts with their families for the reason they left home. Yet, other reasons given were a major surprise, namely to hang around with friends (21.8%) and on impulse (19.7%). Today's runaway of adolescents is characterized by the fact that they don't go back home for a longer time, as they can easily make money by working as a tout for entertainment places, barmaids and prostitutes. Also there are a lot of places they can stay such as a monthly-paid rent room and even PC rooms.

Keum Myung-ja of KYCI said "even though we forcefully get those runaways back to their home and school, they tend to leave home again unless its root cause is addressed. Therefore, parents need to treat their child equally with adults and talk with them to find a way to resolve conflicts."

(Kim Min-sik, callin-u@chosun.com )