Elementary to high school students who say they have experienced school violence increased for four consecutive years to over 2 percent this year for the first time in 11 years, an education ministry survey showed Wednesday. The survey was conducted on all 3.98 million students from fourth-year elementary to high school from April 15 to May 14, and those who responded that they had experienced school violence rose 0.2 percentage point from a year earlier to 2.1 percent this year. The figure had dropped to 0.9 percent in 2020 with classes turning remote during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has since been gradually on the rise with the returning to classes, marking 1.1 percent in 2021, 1.7 percent in 2022 and 1.9 percent last year. The proportion of victims was highest among elementary schoolers with 4.2 percent saying they have been bullied, while 1.6 percent of middle school students and 0.5 percent of high schools said so. Verbal violence was the most frequent type, with 39.4 percent of the victims sayi ng so, up 2.3 percentage points from last year, while those who said they experienced physical violence dropped to 15.5 percent from 17.3 percent last year. Sexual violence victims accounted for 5.9 percent of the total victims, the highest since the education ministry began conducting the school violence survey in 2013, while cyber violence victims accounted for 7.4 percent, up 0.5 percentage point from last year. A National Youth Policy Institute official said the rise in the number of school violence victims was attributable to increased sensitivity on the issue amid heightened public interest. "Particularly in case of sexual jokes, which used to be shrugged off, is now perceived as school violence, and this could have driven the increase," an education official said, also pointing to students' heightened sensitivity as reasons for the increased reports of verbal or sexual violence in school. Source: Yonhap News Agency
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