2.9% of Students Report School Violence Victimization, Highest Ever... Elementary > Middle > High School

Results of the 2026 First School Violence Survey Announced on the 9th
Victim Response Rate Continues to Rise, Marking Highest Level Since 2013
Elementary Schools: 5.7%, Middle Schools: 2.3%, High Schools: 0.8%

The proportion of students reporting experiences of school violence reached 2.9%, marking the highest rate since the survey began in 2013. Notably, the response rate among elementary school students was significantly higher than that of middle and high school students, at 5.7%.

The Ministry of Education announced the results of the "First 2026 School Violence Survey," conducted together with 16 metropolitan and provincial offices of education from April 14 to May 13. Out of 3.9 million students from 4th grade in elementary school to 3rd grade in high school, 3.19 million (81.9%) participated in the survey.

As a result, the student response rate reporting victimization from school violence was 2.9%, an increase of 0.4 percentage points from last year's 2.5%. This marks the highest figure since the full-scale survey began in 2013.

The response rate for student victims has consistently increased over the years: 0.9% in 2020, 1.1% in 2021, 1.7% in 2022, 1.9% in 2023, 2.1% in 2024, and 2.5% in 2025.

When broken down by school level, younger students were more likely to report victimization. The rate among elementary school students was 5.7%, a 0.7 percentage point increase from the previous year. For middle school students, it was 2.3%, and for high school students, 0.8%, both up by 0.2 and 0.1 percentage points, respectively. The elementary school victimization rate has more than tripled since 2020, when it was 1.8%.

By type of violence, verbal abuse was the most common at 37.8%, followed by group bullying at 17.1%, physical violence at 15.7%, and cyberbullying at 7.0%. Compared to last year, the proportion of both verbal abuse and cyberbullying decreased by 1.2 and 0.8 percentage points, respectively, while group bullying increased by 0.7 percentage points and physical violence by 1.1 percentage points.

In contrast to the rising rate of victim reports, the proportion of students admitting to perpetrating school violence decreased by 0.3 percentage points, from 1.1% last year to 0.8%.

On the other hand, the proportion of students who said they witnessed school violence increased from 6.1% to 6.7%. The rate among elementary school students reached 11.0%.

Sung Yoonsuk, senior research fellow at the National Youth Policy Institute of Korea, commented, "The everyday use of digital devices is increasing, and as a result, young people have fewer direct face-to-face interactions and diminishing empathy skills. These factors, combined with the growing sensitivity to school violence among students and parents, may have contributed to an increase in reported school violence." In reality, the number of cases of school violence reported to the education support offices for the 2025 school year totaled 56,880, down from the previous year. However, the proportion of cases reviewed by the deliberation committee rose to 51.7%. The proportion determined as "not school violence" also increased to 22.1%.

The Ministry of Education plans to further strengthen the effectiveness of its policies by prioritizing prevention and countermeasures against school violence and pursue system improvements accordingly. The ministry will develop and distribute grade-specific educational materials aimed at enhancing concrete response skills such as conflict management and defensive actions. In addition, beginning in the second semester of this year, "Eoullim-Plus" model schools—a leading initiative for school violence prevention education—will be used to further spread experiential and practice-based prevention models.

Opportunities for educational resolution and mediation during the handling of incidents will also be expanded. The ministry is developing customized programs to broaden the application of the "relationship restoration reflection system" introduced in March of this year, and will propose policy improvements in the second half of the year to establish relationship restoration as a core procedure in addressing cases of school violence.

In response to new forms of school violence that have become problematic, such as "Yacha rules" and "sparring," efforts will be intensified. Preventative education through the National Police Agency and school police officers (SPOs) will be expanded, while cooperation with the Korea Communications Commission will be enhanced to enable swift action against the dissemination of school violence-related videos in cyberspace.

Shim Mincheol, Director of the Directorate of Student Health and Safety Policy, stated, "We will do our utmost to establish effective, real-world preventive education that develops students' conflict management skills, and to ensure that educational resolutions centered on relationship restoration are implemented in schools. We will also continue to work closely with relevant agencies such as the National Police Agency to promptly address new forms of school violence as they emerge on the ground."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.