'Yacharul' and other new forms of school violence double in disciplinary cases

Disciplinary cases involving "yacharul" and other new forms of school violence more than doubled last school year, and the trend has accelerated this year, with 160 cases reviewed in just the first six months of the school year — already surpassing 70 percent of last year's full-year total.

On Oct. 1, according to data submitted by the Ministry of Education to the office of People Power Party lawmaker Jeong Seong-guk of the National Assembly's Education Committee, the number of cases reviewed under the category of "yacharul and other new forms of school violence" rose 108.4 percent, from 107 in the 2024 school year to 223 in the 2025 school year.

Through late August this year, 160 cases had already been reviewed — equivalent to 71.7 percent of the entire 2025 school year total.

The number of students involved has also grown. Victims increased from 148 in the 2024 school year to 293 in the 2025 school year, while the number of perpetrators rose from 252 to 560 over the same period.

From March through August this year, 243 students were recorded as victims and 420 as perpetrators. Those figures, however, cover only six months and are not directly comparable to the full-year totals from the previous two school years.

"Yacharul" is slang for bare-knuckle fighting with no rules or protective gear. Among students, it typically involves a mutual agreement to fight and a promise not to report the incident — but in practice it has increasingly become a vehicle for serious school violence, with students being coerced into participating against their will and footage of the fights being recorded and shared online.

In Gwangju last September, a student was forcibly fitted with boxing gloves and made to spar despite refusing, suffering a ruptured eardrum that required about two months of hospital treatment. The assaults continued afterward — the perpetrator repeatedly attacked the victim for declining to accompany him, refusing to share meals or not answering calls.

Elementary school students have not been spared. In Daegu last October, a fifth-grader was forced into a yacharul fight at an apartment playground despite saying he did not want to participate. The two had agreed not to retaliate and not to strike each other in the head, but the victim was hit in the face and suffered severe swelling around his ear. When the victim won the fight, the other student reportedly struck him hard in the face again, continuing the assault.

The Ministry of Education says the share of students reporting victimization and the overall number of victims are both rising. In the ministry's first school violence survey of 2026, 2.9 percent of students said they had experienced school violence — up 0.4 percentage points from last year. By school level, the victimization rate was 5.7 percent at elementary schools, 2.3 percent at middle schools and 0.8 percent at high schools, with all three rising. Physical violence accounted for 15.7 percent of reported incidents, up 1.1 percentage points from last year.

"A 'mutual agreement' among students must never serve as a free pass for violence," People Power Party lawmaker Jeong Seong-guk said. "Responsibility must be assigned across the entire chain — from those who plan, incite, film and distribute the fights — and the state must take charge of follow-up measures so that victims can be freed from the fear of videos circulating online and of retaliation."