Abuse not tolerated: South Korean law defines school violence as actions committed against students inside or outside of school. — The Korea Herald/ANN
The percentage of Seoul students who said they have been victimised at school was the highest in the past 10 years, according to a recent survey.
Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) said on Dec 15 that a survey of 486,729 students between the fourth grade of elementary school and the final year of high school found 2.2% had experienced some form of mistreatment at school.
The figure increased by 2% compared with 2022 and marked a 10-year high.
South Korean law defines school violence as actions committed against students inside or outside of school that include but are not limited to physical or mental injury, damage to property, threats, sexual violence, defamation, extortion, coercion and bullying online or in person.
In the survey, 4.6% of elementary pupils said they experienced school violence while 1.6% of middle school students and 0.4% of those in high school answered likewise.
The percentage of elementary-school victims remained unchanged compared with 2022, while victims in middle and high schools rose by 0.7 percentage point and 0.1 percentage point respectively.Officials suspect the increase in school violence is due to in-person classes being conducted, in contrast to schools opting for online classes during the better part of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Students are back to school after Covid-19 and have had less chance to interact with their friends (during the pandemic).
“We think this leads to a higher tendency towards students having more difficulty addressing conflicts and more violence,” said a SMOE official.
The percentage of children reporting school violence dropped to 1.1% in 2020, the first year schools were forced to conduct their classes online, from 2% in 2019.
The most common form of school violence was verbal abuse at 37.7%, followed by physical abuse and bullying from a group at 18.1% and 15.3% respectively.
About 68.8% of the violence occurred within school premises and 29.4% of the cases occurred inside a classroom.
Most of the time, the perpetrators were classmates (46.1%), followed by those in the same grade but a different class (32.7%); 6.8% were students in a different grade from the victim.
In 93% of the cases, the victim alerted another person: a legal guardian or relative in 37.9% of cases; a teacher 29.5% of the time; 15.5% of victims told their friends.
Only 1.5% of the victims reported their cases to the police, while 1.2% notified an organisation outside school.
As in previous surveys, students were less inclined to reveal that they had mistreated others, with only 0.9% saying they were perpetrators of school violence.
But the figure more than doubled compared with 2022, when 0.4% of the respondents admitted to having done so.
The percentage of students who witnessed school violence also rose from 4.5% in 2022 to 5.5%, although 30% of them said they were powerless to do anything.
But 35% of them helped the victims by consoling them and offering other help, while 17.6% of them reported the case to authority figures.
About 16.5% of those who witnessed bullying stepped in to stop the abuse, but 0.9% said they joined in. — The Korea Herald/ANN
