Daegu reported the nation’s lowest school violence victimization rate for the 15th straight year, though educators warn new forms of bullying persist.
Fifteen years ago in Daegu, a middle school student was caught on an elevator surveillance camera, crouched down, wiping tears from his face just before arriving on the rooftop floor of his apartment building. “Thank you, Dad. I love you, Mom. You have to change the passcode to the house because they know it and might try to break in,” read a part of his suicide note found later.
The student’s suicide — a tragic result of school bullying — in 2011 acted as the catalyst for the creation of an annual government survey of school violence in 2012 in an effort to combat bullying among students.
Daegu has not taken the task lightly, and its efforts have been paying off.
The proportion of students who said they had experienced school violence was the lowest in the country in Daegu for the 15th consecutive year. The percentage of students who answered that they had been victim of school violence in 2026 stood at 1.3 percent in Daegu, less than half the national average of 2.9 percent around the country. The survey, released on Thursday, was conducted between April 14 and May 13 this year.
Of the 181,504 students in Daegu from the fourth year of elementary school through the third year of high school, 164,029 participated in the survey. The participation rate was 90.4 percent, higher than the national average of 81.9 percent.
“The result reflects the high level of awareness and sensitivity among students in the region toward school violence,” the Daegu Metropolitan Office of Education said.
The percentage of those who reported being bullied was 2.3 percent among elementary school students, 1.1 percent among middle school students and 0.4 percent among high school students, all below the respective national averages of 5.7 percent, 2.3 percent and 0.8 percent.
Verbal abuse accounted for 38.5 percent of reported victimization, followed by social exclusion at 17.5 percent, physical violence at 14.9 percent, cyberbullying at 6.4 percent, stalking at 6.1 percent, coercion at 5.6 percent, sexual violence at 5.5 percent and extortion at 5.4 percent.
The Daegu Metropolitan Office of Education has strengthened measures to shed the city’s association with school violence since the 2012 incident. More recently, it has been implementing its “3-STEP” education initiative linking school violence prevention with response and support measures.
The “Empathy Project,” part of the prevention stage, is a participatory program that moves away from lecture-based education by allowing students to choose how they would respond to conflict situations and discuss their views with friends.
The conflict mediation support team, introduced last year, determines whether the parties involved are willing to pursue mediation and coordinates the process during the early stages of school violence cases. After an agreement is reached, the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” (translated) program provides follow-up management aimed at preventing conflicts from recurring. The education office also supports the recovery of students who experienced violence while providing emotional healing programs to students who committed violence in an effort to prevent recurrence.
Teachers emphasize that the survey results show that policies should be examined and improved with greater focus as awareness of school violence has increased in recent years.
“Even if the figures themselves came out low, new forms of school violence continue to emerge in schools and efforts to mediate such cases are ongoing,” said Ahn Young-bin, policy chief of the Daegu branch of the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union. “The education office should closely monitor these developments and establish appropriate measures in response.”
BY YOON SO-YEON, BAEK KYUNG-SEO [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]
