A classroom of an elementary school in Seoul is vacant on March 17, 2020. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, May 31 (Korea Bizwire) — School violence, which dropped significantly during the pandemic era, is beginning to rise.
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency reported that the reported number of school violence cases decreased from 11,832 in 2019 to 5,555 in 2020, before it started to climb back up to 6,823 cases last year.
The number of arrests, in turn, dropped from 2,245 in 2019 to 1,702 in 2020, before rising back up to 1,771 last year.
The types of school violence have also gone through significant changes. While physical forms of violence like assault dropped, non-physical abuse like defamation rose significantly.
Comparing the 2017 statistics with last year’s arrests, cases of physical assault dropped by 47.3 percent, and extortion by 11.6 percent. In contrast, defamation rose by 72.3 percent and sexual violence by 28.5 percent.
School violence occurred more often outside of school (56.4 percent) than on campus (32.7 percent).
Of all the school violence reported, 1 in 5 incidents (19.8 percent) took place online.
At 56 percent more than half of school violence reports came from elementary school students, followed by middle school students (24.3 percent) and high school students (15.3 percent).
Juvenile crimes in Seoul have dropped by 34.5 percent over the past five years.
However, of juvenile crimes committed by young people between 10 and 13 years of age who are exempt from criminal punishment, those committed by 10 and 11-year-olds have jumped by 28.6 percent, indicating that the average age of juvenile crime has gone down.
H. M. Kang (hmkang@koreabizwire.com)
