Supreme Court rules first-grader's push not school violence, citing age

South Korea's Supreme Court has ruled that a first-grade elementary school student who pushed a classmate off a platform, causing injury, did not commit an act of school violence.

The Supreme Court's First Division, presided over by Justice Cheon Dae-yeop, upheld a lower court ruling against student A, who had sought to overturn a decision by a regional education office's administrative appeals committee that found the incident did not constitute school violence.

In 2023, student B, then a first-grader aged 7, pushed classmate A off an 80-centimeter-high platform in the school's multipurpose room during an after-school class. A sustained bruising from the fall.

The school violence deliberation committee under the district education office ruled that B's actions constituted school violence and ordered a written apology. The district education superintendent issued the measure accordingly.

B's side appealed, requesting the measure be rescinded. The education office's administrative appeals committee agreed, ruling the incident did not rise to the level of school violence and canceling the measure. A's side then filed suit in court, seeking to overturn that decision.

The first instance court sided with A, finding that B's conduct did constitute school violence. It reasoned that a child old enough to enter elementary school would have understood that pushing a peer from that height could cause injury and that such behavior was wrong.

The appellate court disagreed, ruling the incident did not amount to school violence. It found that B, who was only 7 at the time, had not reached the threshold requiring formal guidance under the law, nor had the act risen to a level warranting classification as school violence.

The Supreme Court agreed. In its decision, the court held that determining whether an act constitutes school violence requires a comprehensive assessment — not merely whether the act fits the statutory definition on its face, but also the severity of the conduct, the circumstances in which it arose, and the ages and relationship of the students involved, weighed against the need to protect the victim and to guide and educate the offending student.

The court also cautioned that treating every act that appears to involve "physical, psychological or financial harm" under the School Violence Prevention Act as school violence would mean that all conflicts and disputes among students would be classified as such.