Nationwide poll shows 51% of students say abused verbally; 13% suffered physical bullying


Over 12 percent of school children have experienced abuse by fellow pupils during the past year, and verbal assault and group bullying were the most frequent types, a nationwide survey showed.

According to the interim findings from the survey on school violence by the Education Ministry on Wednesday, a total of 171,637 students said they have been victims of school mistreatment during the past year.

Of them, 51.2 percent said bullying involved verbal assault, and 13.3 percent said they have suffered physical group bullying.

The findings are based on the responses of about 1.38 million pupils across the country from the fourth grade of elementary school to high school seniors. The survey was conducted from Jan. 18 to Feb. 20.

The ministry noted that it is not a complete result as more children are expected to send responses by April, when the final result and its analysis will come out.

“We disclosed the interim findings because of the high level of social interest in the survey,” said Kim Wan-tae, head of the Korean Educational Development Center, which conducted the survey with the ministry.

Pupils in South Jeolla Province responded the most with 46.3 percent taking part in the survey, while those in Seoul showed the lowest response rate at 9.1 percent.

Gangwon was the province with the most frequent school violence reports at 15.1 percent, while Daegu reported the least cases with 9.1 percent.

Daegu is the southeastern city where bully victims committed suicide in December last year, which took the media by storm and triggered a nationwide campaign against school violence.

School violence occurs most frequently in classrooms (25 percent), followed by restrooms or in hallways (9.6 percent). Over 7 percent of respondents said they have been bullied online or through mobile phones.

About 24 percent said there are school gangs at their schools or at least know of them.

Middle school students reported the largest number of school gangs with 33.3 percent, followed by elementary school with 23.7 percent and high school with 11.6 percent.

The number of schools where more than 100 pupils answered that their schools have school gangs were 643.

Some of them are expected to be designated as “school violence high-risk schools” and receive counseling assistance, according to officials.

The ministry said they are sharing the survey findings with the police so that they can deal with some of the more serious issues immediately.

“So far, we have a total of 106,063 cases shared with the police, and 3,138 cases have been put under police investigation or have already been solved with police,” said Oh Seok-hwan, head of the anti-school violence team at the ministry.
After assessing 13,941 more cases, the police will strengthen patrol duty or install more surveillance cameras on the streets surrounding schools.

About the relatively low response rate, officials said that the survey itself is of great importance because it can find out problems in every school and deal with them effectively.

By Lee Woo-young (wylee@heraldcorp.com)