THE proportion of South Korean students reporting they were victims of school violence has climbed to the highest level since the government began tracking the problem in 2013, with primary school students bearing the brunt of the increase.
According to the Education Ministry’s survey on school violence for the first half of 2025, released in September, 2.5% of students said they had suffered violence in the past semester, up from 2.1% a year earlier. The figure is the highest since the ministry began its nationwide survey 12 years ago, when the rate stood at 2.2%. After falling to a pandemic low of 0.9% in 2020, when in-person classes were curtailed, the rate has steadily risen for five consecutive years.
