The proportion of students reporting they were victims of school violence has climbed to the highest level in South Korea since the government began tracking the problem in 2013, with elementary school students bearing the brunt of the violence.

According to the education ministry's survey on school violence for the first half of 2025, released on Sept 16, 2.5 percent of students said they had suffered violence in the past semester, up from 2.1 percent a year earlier. The figure is the highest since the ministry began its nationwide survey 12 years ago.

Elementary school students reported the highest victimization rate at 5 percent. Middle school students followed at 2.1 percent and high school students at 0.7 percent. The survey, conducted online from April 14 to May 13, covered 3.97 million students from fourth grade through high school, with an 82.2 percent participation rate.

Verbal abuse remained the most common form of violence, accounting for 39 percent of cases, though its share slipped slightly from last year. Group bullying came next at 16.4 percent, followed by physical assault at 14.6 percent, and cyberbullying at 7.8 percent.

While verbal and physical violence declined, both bullying and cyberbullying grew, reflecting the increasingly complex ways conflicts extend beyond classrooms.

Reports of sexual violence also reached a record high. Six percent of respondents said they had suffered sexual harassment or assault at school.

In the first half of this year alone, 422 teenagers were apprehended for deepfake sexual crimes, representing nearly 60 percent of all arrests for such offenses. Police data show illegal filming on school premises nearly doubled from 110 cases in 2020 to 204 in 2023.

The share of students who said they had witnessed school violence also rose to 6.1 percent from 5.0 percent a year earlier.

Yet, 30.7 percent of witnesses said they did nothing in response, and 7.8 percent of victims told no one, citing fears that "the problem would grow bigger" or that reporting it would be useless.

Inconsistent data

Despite the rise in self-reported victimization, official case filings tell a more nuanced story. In 2024, schools recorded 58,502 formal reports of violence, down from 61,445 in 2023. Middle schools accounted for roughly half of the total, followed by elementary and high schools.

An education ministry official said that while elementary school showed the sharpest increase in self-reported victimization, actual case filings from elementary schools remain lower and even declined this year, suggesting that factors such as the rise in cyberbullying, which can affect many people at once, and heightened parental sensitivity may be driving the higher survey responses.

The ministry said it will use the survey to guide preventive measures, including a planned "relationship restoration deliberation system" that would allow expert teams to mediate minor cases, especially among first and second graders.

"Restoring trust within school communities and rebuilding students' social and emotional wellbeing is an urgent task," said Lee Hae-sook, director of the ministry's student health policy department. "We will also work closely with other government agencies to build systems that can respond to the increasingly complex forms of cyberbullying and sexual violence."

The Korea Herald, South Korea