Some 60,000 students of elementary, middle and high schools said they had been victims of school violence, according to a survey released by the Education Ministry on Tuesday.

This is about 1.6 percent of the 3.72 million students, from fourth graders to high school seniors, who took part in the monthlong survey in April, up from 1.3 percent (50,000 students) last year and 0.9 percent (37,000 students) in 2017.

There are about 4.1 million fourth graders through high school seniors here.
Psychological violence -- such as verbal abuse, group bullying and cyberbullying -- increased, the ministry said.

Among elementary school students, 3.6 percent said they had been victims of school violence compared with 0.8 percent of middle schoolers and 0.4 percent of high schoolers.

The school violence victimization rate of elementary school children rose 0.8 percentage points from last year, while that of middle school students gained 0.1 percentage point and that of high school students remained the same.

Classmates (48.7 percent) were the most common inflictors, followed by students in other classes in the same grade (30.1 percent).

Most of the school violence took place in classrooms (30.6 percent) and corridors (14.5 percent). As for middle and high school students, cyberspace (over 10 percent) was the third most common venue of school violence.

As for the type of school violence, verbal abuse was the most common (8.1 out of every 1,000 students), followed by group bullying (5.3), cyberbullying (2), stalking (2) and physical abuse (2). There were also victims of extortion (1.4), forced errands (1.1) as well as sexual harassment and assaults (0.9).

This year saw a sharp rise in the victimization rate of group bullying, which had been at around 3 and 4 out of 1,000 students since 2013.

Group bullying also accounted for 23.2 percent of all school violence, up 6 percentage points from last year.

“Group bullying tends to lead to other forms of school violence … 41.4 percent of the students who have been victims of group bullying experienced verbal abuse, and 14.7 percent of them went through cyberbullying,” the ministry said.

In addition, about 22,000 students, or 0.6 percent of all respondents, said they had inflicted school violence, up 0.3 percentage point from last year.

Four percent (149,000 students) of the respondents said they had witnessed school violence, up 0.6 percentage points from last year.

By Kim so-hyun (sophie@heraldcorp.com)