A legal definition, six types, and figures left in their years

School is supposed to help a young person grow. The cases that reach the news make it hard to answer that the classroom is doing that work cleanly. The School Violence Prevention Act, as it reads it, defines school violence as any act, in or around school and also online, that harms a student's body, mind, or property. Social-control theory, social-learning theory after Sutherland and others, and a victim-centered view that safer everyday interaction lowers risk are briefly named as ways of seeing the problem.

Then lists six types: physical violence, sometimes disguised as a joke; extortion, including intangible demands; exclusion, including newer online forms; verbal violence, which it calls the most common; sexual violence, including the stirring of fear even when resistance is not clearly spoken; and cyber violence. A foundation survey put victimization at 10.5 percent in 2008 and 11.8 percent in 2010, perpetration at 8.5 percent and then 11.4 percent, and a felt sense of seriousness at 28.6 percent and then 38.1 percent. Cyber violence rose from 4.5 percent in 2012 to 14.2 percent in 2013. Committee cases rose from 19,521 in 2014 to 23,673 in 2016. Those figures stay in their years. It also notes that the age of cases has been falling toward the lower elementary years, and records the Daegu case in 2011 and the Gyeongsan case in 2013.

Causes close to home, and responses at home and abroad

Causes tangle together. Adolescence can leave emotional maturity behind a changing body. Rubin linked a child's frequent anger to later harming others; Pope and Bierman linked difficulty paying attention to a higher risk of being targeted; Rigby and Slee noted that low self-esteem can turn a person who was hurt into a person who later hurts someone else. Unstable care, a weak bond with parents, and violence at home raise the risk of harming others. A teacher's indifference, unstructured places such as toilets and playing fields, and friends already in trouble are school factors. Clashes of values, a violent subculture, and harmful surroundings near the school, read through a broken-windows idea, are social ones.

At home, a voluntary-reporting period promises leniency and confidentiality, with calls to 117 and 112. A police prevention class is criticized as spending 17 of 50 minutes on introducing the police. One school-dedicated officer may cover ten schools, and shortages and later misconduct are also noted. Publicity for reporting is thin and there is too little help for a student who is afraid to speak. Abroad it points to a three-tier US prevention model, Britain's ABC policy, Secondary Support Units, Red Balloon classrooms, and one-to-one specialist matching, and Norway's Olweus program and Zero Program. The work that lasts is prevention built into education, and a system of protection and counseling that starts with the person who was hurt.

Sources

1. the concept, six types, and causes of school violence in Korea, and on responses in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Norway, citing among other figures a foundation survey for 2008–2010 and committee cases for 2014–2016.

Last updated: 14 November 2026