"Do I Have to Prove What Happened to Me?"... The Wall of Procedures that Wounds School Violence Victims

Paper Released by BTF Blue Tree Foundation School Violence Issues Research Institute

Concerns of School Violence Victims Extend Throughout the Entire Resolution Process

“School Violence Response Procedures Should Be Made Easier to Understand

It has been found that the difficulties faced by students who have suffered from school violence and their guardians extend throughout the entire resolution process, including reporting, investigation, and proving the damage.

According to a paper published by the research team at the School Violence Research Institute under BTF Blue Tree Foundation in the journal "Journal of Education and Culture" on September 29, the "National School Violence Counseling Hotline" received an average of about 1,700 counseling cases annually over the past five years. The research team specifically analyzed 825 cases—excluding omissions—from the 1,576 cases received in 2024, totaling 166,410 sentences. As a result, nine major counseling topics were identified.

"Changes in Speaker and Client Discourse Topics in the National School Violence Counseling Hotline: Big Data Analysis of Counseling Using LDA Topic Modeling (Mijung Kim, Naeun Shin, Dawoon Kim)", Journal of Education and Culture.

The main topics were: ▲the circumstances of the incident and psychological and physical damage; ▲the difficulty in deciding whether to report and how to respond; ▲conflicts with the school and the perpetrator's side; ▲challenges in process navigation and fact-finding; ▲the burden of protective measures and proving damages; and ▲questions regarding the outcome and the administrative actions taken. The research team noted, "The worries of victims and guardians do not end with the damage itself but extend throughout the entire resolution process, including reporting, investigation, protective measures, and follow-up responses."

The focus of conversations also changed as counseling progressed. At the beginning of counseling, clients (such as students and parents) accounted for 61.5% of all remarks, while counselors made up 38.5%. In the latter part of the process, the proportion of clients dropped to 39.9% and that of counselors rose to 60.1%. Initially, victims mainly explained the incident and presented issues, but as the counseling continued, counselors increasingly focused on interpreting the situation, providing procedural guidance, and supporting decision-making, reviewing possible responses and options.

The analysis of key vocabulary reflected a similar pattern. In the early stages of counseling, clients frequently used words like "friend," "violence," and "situation," but by the end, their vocabulary shifted to terms such as "measures" and "committee."

The researchers analyzed, "The difficulties after experiencing school violence are not limited to the experience of violence itself, but extend to the burden of understanding and choosing among complex case-handling procedures." They added, "It is necessary to build school violence response procedures in a way that makes it easy for victims to understand and apply to real situations."

Meanwhile, according to the 2025 School Violence Survey by the Ministry of Education, the victim response rate among elementary, middle, and high school students nationwide reached a record high of 2.5%.

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