The share of South Korean elementary, middle and high school students who reported being victims of school bullying reached 2.9%, the highest level since nationwide surveys began in 2013. Physical violence and group exclusion accounted for larger shares of reported cases than a year earlier.
The Ministry of Education said on the 9th that the victim response rate in its "First 2026 School Violence Survey," conducted with 16 metropolitan and provincial offices of education, rose 0.4 percentage points from the first survey last year. The survey covered 3.9 million students from the fourth grade of elementary school through the third year of high school and was conducted online from April 14 to May 13. A total of 3.19 million students took part, a participation rate of 81.9%. The survey period ran from the second semester of last year to the time of response.
The victim response rate fell to 0.9% in 2020, when classes were held remotely because of COVID-19, and has climbed since. It rose steadily to 1.1% in 2021, 1.7% in 2022, 1.9% in 2023, 2.1% in 2024, 2.5% in 2025 and 2.9% in 2026.
By school level, elementary schools posted the highest rate at 5.7%, followed by middle schools at 2.3% and high schools at 0.8%. The rates rose 0.7 percentage points, 0.2 percentage points and 0.1 percentage point, respectively, from a year earlier.
Verbal abuse accounted for the largest share of reported cases at 37.8%, followed by group exclusion at 17.1%, physical violence at 15.7% and cyberbullying at 7.0%. Compared with last year, verbal abuse and cyberbullying fell 1.2 percentage points and 0.8 percentage points, respectively, while physical violence rose 1.1 percentage points and group exclusion rose 0.7 percentage points. Verbal abuse made up the largest share at every school level.
The share of students who reported committing bullying, by contrast, fell 0.3 percentage points from a year earlier to 0.8%. The rate dropped 0.8 percentage points to 1.6% at elementary schools and 0.2 percentage points to 0.7% at middle schools, while high schools were unchanged at 0.1%. Students who said they had witnessed school bullying accounted for 6.7%, up 0.6 percentage points from a year earlier. The share rose at every school level, to 11.0% at elementary schools, 6.8% at middle schools and 2.6% at high schools.
"As everyday use of digital devices increases, adolescents lack experience in forming face-to-face relationships with others, and their capacity for empathy is also declining," said Sung Yun-sook, a senior research fellow at the National Youth Policy Institute who conducted and analyzed the survey. "This appears to be the combined result of factors including the possibility that conflicts among peers spill over into school bullying, and heightened sensitivity to school bullying among students and parents."
The ministry plans to strengthen its response to new forms of school bullying, including so-called yacha rule fights — brawls conducted without rules or protective gear — and sparring. Starting in the second semester of this year, it will expand a hands-on, practice-based prevention education model centered on designated lead schools under its bullying prevention program, and will pursue institutional changes to establish relationship repair as a core step in handling bullying cases.
