School bullying hits 10-year high in Seoul: Study
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South Korean law defines school violence as actions committed against students inside or outside of school.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: UNSPLASH
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SEOUL - 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 per cent had experienced some form of mistreatment at school. The figure increased by 2 per cent 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 per cent of elementary pupils said they experienced school violence, while 1.6 per cent of middle school students and 0.4 per cent 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 they’d have had less chance to interact with their friends (during the pandemic). We think this leads to 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 per cent in 2020, the first year schools were forced to conduct their classes online, from 2 per cent in 2019.
The most common form of school violence was verbal abuse at 37.7 per cent, followed by physical abuse and bullying from a group at 18.1 per cent and 15.3 per cent, respectively. About 68.8 per cent of the violence occurred within school premises, and 29.4 per cent of the cases occurred inside a classroom.
Most of the time, the perpetrators were classmates (46.1 per cent), followed by those in the same grade but a different class (32.7 per cent); 6.8 per cent were students in a different grade from the victim.
In 93 per cent of the cases, the victim alerted another person: a legal guardian or relative in 37.9 per cent of cases; a teacher 29.5 per cent of the time; 15.5 per cent of victims told their friends.
Only 1.5 per cent of the victims reported their cases to the police, while 1.2 per cent notified an organisation outside school.
As in previous surveys, students were less inclined to reveal that they had mistreated others, with only 0.9 per cent saying they were perpetrators of school violence.
But the figure more than doubled compared with 2022, when 0.4 per cent of the respondents admitted to having done so.
The percentage of students who witnessed school violence also rose, from 4.5 per cent in 2022 to 5.5 per cent, although 30 per cent of them said they were powerless to do anything. But 35 per cent of them helped the victims by consoling them and offering other help, while 17.6 per cent of them reported the case to authority figures.
About 16.5 per cent of those who witnessed bullying stepped in to stop the abuse, but 0.9 per cent said they joined in. THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK
