Résumé
OBJECTIVES: This review strives to look through the reality of school situation in Korea which gives the most severe burden of conflict to adolescents nowadays, for the purpose of better understanding of them. METHODS: Followings comprised of the summary of the materials from the published articles and books, and from mass media regarding 'school collapse' phenomenon in Korea, and also include materials regarding school non-attenders. And discussion was done with developmental and psychiatric perspectives on the phenomenon along with on school non-attenders. CONCLUSION: School non-attenders nowadays with the issue of 'school collapse' have different characteristics from the dropouts reported in many previous studies. Psychiatrists need to accommodate their previous view on adolescents as the way of adolescents' coping has rapidly changed. It is noted that there are few researches regarding school non-attenders, as well as regarding school factors associated with non-attending in Korea. This review was done to call for future studies focused on the interdependent relationship between school processes and the individual characteristics of non-attenders, so that enable us to capture the complexity of how adolescents make their decision of hangingin or droppingout of school.