It found that 95% of teenagers have never been subjected to corporal punishment by school teachers.
On the 4th, according to the education sector, research fellow Yu Min-sang of the National Youth Policy Institute (NYPI) and others released these findings through the report titled "2024 study on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Adolescents - baseline analysis on the human rights of children and adolescents in Korea."
When the research team asked 8,718 elementary, middle and high school students nationwide whether they had ever received physical punishment from school teachers, such as being made to stand as punishment or being hit with a hand or stick, 94.9% answered "never" as of 2024. This is about a 20-percentage-point increase from 76.3% in 2014.
This appears to reflect the effective ban on corporal punishment in schools under the Enforcement Decree of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Child Welfare Act, and student rights ordinances of local governments.
Among students who said they had experienced corporal punishment, the most common response was "about once or twice a year" at 2.9%. That was followed by once or twice every two to three months (0.9%), once or twice a month (0.8%), and once or twice a week or more (0.4%).
By contrast, corporal punishment at home remained at a similar level to the past. Among teenagers, 74.4% answered that they had "never" received physical punishment from parents, such as being made to stand as punishment or being hit with a hand or stick, showing little change from 74.3% in 2014, 10 years ago.
Among teenagers who said they had experienced corporal punishment, 17.2% said "about once or twice a year," 5.1% said "once or twice every two to three months," 2.7% said "once or twice a month," and 1.2% said "once or twice a week or more."
Emotional aggression, such as hearing insulting remarks or profanity from parents, showed an upward trend. A total of 34.4% of teenagers said they had experienced emotional aggression from parents. Only 65.6% said "never." The proportion of respondents who said they had received no emotional aggression at all from parents fell year by year from 71.2% in 2020 to 69.5% in 2021 and 67.6% in 2023.