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The 15-year-old seventh grader in Masan identified only as Hwang threw himself out of the window of his 18th floor apartment on April 19, 2002. He died in hospital a week later.

"In order to raise the alarm against escalating schoolyard bullying, we belatedly make public our late son's suicide note accusing his classmates of bullying," the father, 51, said. The note was written in pencil on two pages of A4 paper.

“Please don't torment me,” the boy wrote addressing the bullies. “You stole my sharp pen and insisted it's yours... You put dirty candy into my mouth while I was asleep."

"I wanted to stab you to death, but held on," the note continues. "Even if I die, I wouldn't leave you alive."

The boy also confessed to stealing money from his parents to placate his bullying classmates, saying, "Mom and Dad, I'm sorry I did only bad things. I tried not to, but I stole money to buy my friends what they wanted to eat."

The father said the family would petition the police to reopen the case "to help prevent more victims of campus bullying.”

Police said they would look into the case again if they received the petition. “But because it's difficult to regard bullying as the direct cause of the death in question, chances are slim that Hwang’s tormentors will be punished,” an officer added.

In the absence of the note, police earlier concluded the boy's chronic insecurity about his looks caused the suicide.

(englishnews@chosun.com )