Runaway (가출)
Overview
Runaway (家出) refers to the act in which a child or adolescent arbitrarily leaves the residence where they had been under the protection and supervision of a guardian or caregiver and does not return home for a considerable period. Perspectives that view it as mere delinquency coexist with those that view it as a consequence of child abuse, poverty, and family breakdown; in South Korea, the Child Welfare Act, the Youth Protection Act, the Youth Welfare Support Act, and the Act on the Finding and Protection of Missing Children, etc. serve as the relevant legal frameworks.
Key Content
Definition and Types
- Voluntary runaway: cases in which the young person leaves home by their own will, such as in response to family conflict, abuse, or excessive control.
- Involuntary/abandonment-type runaway: cases in which the guardian gives up caregiving or drives the child out, effectively constituting child abandonment.
- Short-term and repeated runaway: a form in which the youth returns home within a few days, common in adolescence, and the more it repeats, the greater the risk of it becoming prolonged.
- Long-term runaway: lasts more than a month, exposing the youth to homelessness, delinquency, and various forms of exploitation.
- Age criteria: runaway by a child under 13 years of age may immediately become subject to a missing-person report, and the speed of response greatly determines the outcome of the case.
Causes
Runaway results from a combination of individual and environmental factors. The main factors cited include physical and emotional abuse and neglect within the family, parents' alcohol or gambling problems, poverty and housing insecurity, parents' divorce or separation, excessive academic pressure and grade-related stress, school violence and peer alienation, mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and attention deficit, and online grooming and exploitation via smartphones. In particular, the view is emphasized that runaway by abused children is not delinquency but a survival strategy.
Current Situation
According to National Police Agency missing-child statistics and youth-related fact-finding surveys, tens of thousands of runaway reports are filed each year, and a significant portion of those involved return home within one to three days. However, repeated and long-term runaway tends to be concentrated among a small number of youth, who tend to drift between youth shelters and temporary protection facilities or to be exposed to homelessness, prostitution, theft, voice phishing, and other crimes. Runaway experience often leads to becoming an out-of-school youth, and dropping out of school in turn creates a vicious cycle linked to difficulties in employment and self-reliance. Many runaway youth have already experienced abuse or neglect at home, and protective measures are often needed alongside.
Legal and Institutional Responses
- Act on the Finding and Protection of Missing Children, etc.: provides the basis for reporting and searching for missing children, requesting location information, and conducting genetic testing.
- Child Welfare Act: provides the basis for protective measures regarding abuse and neglect, child protection agencies, and shelter operation.
- Youth Protection Act and Youth Welfare Support Act: stipulate the basis for counseling, protection, and self-reliance support for runaway youth and for the establishment of youth shelters (temporary, short-term, mid- to long-term, and self-reliance halls).
- Luring runaway youth, providing them with lodging and meals, and exploiting them are subject to punishment, and arranging online "conditional meetups" (prostitution) is also cracked down on.
- The police operate an early detection system for missing children, the 112 report line, and Code Adam (a procedure for responding to missing children in large retail stores).
Support System
Youth shelters are divided into temporary shelters, short-term shelters, mid- to long-term shelters, and self-reliance halls, and they are linked with the 1388 youth counseling hotline, youth counseling and welfare centers, the out-of-school youth support center (Kkumdream), and the integrated support system for youth in crisis. Since the 2020s, a trend has spread of using terms such as "youth in crisis" or "youth who have left home" instead of "runaway" in order to reduce the stigma effect.
Latest Trends
- In 2024–2025, along with discussions on reorganizing child and youth policy functions, attempts have continued to adjust the control tower of the protection system for runaway youth.
- With changes in the digital environment, new risks such as online grooming, illegal job placement, and enticement into gambling and drugs have grown, and regulations on digital sex crimes and online exploitation have been strengthened in response.
- As regional disparities among youth shelters and shortages of capacity continue to be raised, expansion of shelters and expanded linkage to self-reliance allowances and housing support are being pursued.
- An integrated case management model linking policies to expand access to youth mental health services with runaway prevention is being attempted.
- There is a trend of strengthening early-detection-centered responses, such as simplifying the location information verification procedure when reporting a missing child and upgrading the police–local government–private cooperation system.
- Experts emphasize that rather than defining runaway as an individual problem, it should be viewed as a crisis signal from the family, school, and community, and that prevention and early intervention should be designed together.
Related Topics
- [[Youth]]
- [[Child abuse]]
- [[Youth shelter]]
- [[Out-of-school youth]]
- [[Missing child]]
- [[Child Welfare Act]]