School Trauma, Domestic Consequences: New Study Flags Family Impact of Bullying (Image supported by ChatGPT)
SEOUL, Dec. 26 (Korea Bizwire) — A significant share of South Korean adolescents who have experienced school violence have also engaged in violence against their parents, according to a new academic study, underscoring concerns that trauma suffered at school can spill over into the home and pointing to the need for family-based interventions.
The findings, published this month in the Korean Journal of Youth Studies, are based on a survey of 1,552 teenagers aged 13 to 18 conducted by researchers at Yonsei University. Nearly one in three respondents, or 31.9 percent, said they had experienced school violence, either as victims, perpetrators or both.
Among those with any experience of school violence, 30.1 percent reported having used violence against a parent—more than three times the rate among adolescents with no such experience.
The risk was highest among students who had been both victims and perpetrators at school: 38.9 percent of that group said they had assaulted a parent, nearly four times the rate seen among those who reported no exposure to school violence.
By comparison, 21.9 percent of students who were only victims and 16.5 percent of those who were only perpetrators reported violent behavior toward their parents.
The researchers said the results suggest that adolescents who experience overlapping roles of victim and aggressor at school may struggle to process feelings of injury and frustration, instead displacing those emotions onto parents, whom they perceive as close and emotionally safe targets.
Parental accounts collected alongside the youth survey reinforced the findings. Sixteen percent of parents said they had experienced some form of violence from their child, most commonly verbal abuse. While physical violence was less frequent, incidents such as pushing, throwing objects or striking parents were reported at levels the researchers said should not be dismissed.
The study calls for a shift in how school violence is addressed, urging policymakers and educators to treat students with both victim and perpetrator experiences as a high-risk group requiring specialized support.
Interventions, the authors argue, should extend beyond the individual student to include parents and families, recognizing that the consequences of school violence often reach well beyond the classroom.
Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
