The Seoul Administrative Court said on the 16th that it increased the number of dedicated panels handling school violence cases from two to four to respond to the rising trend in such cases.
The Seoul Administrative Court, the only administrative specialty court in the country, has had dedicated school violence panels since Feb. 2023. In the first year, it assigned one presiding judge with more than 20 years of legal experience and two judges with more than 10 years of experience, forming three single-judge panels. From 2024 to 2025, it operated only two panels with two judges who had more than 10 years of experience.
All judges to be assigned to the four single-judge panels have been designated as presiding judges with more than 20 years of legal experience. There will be one per panel, four in total. Drawing on experience working as research judges for the Supreme Court's Constitutional and Administrative Division, handling numerous administrative cases including school violence, and raising children of elementary school age or older, they will preside over school violence cases.
School violence cases are rising rapidly. The number of annual school violence cases filed with administrative courts recently stood at 51 in 2022, 71 in 2023, 98 in 2024, and 134 last year.
Generally, a school violence case can be resolved by the principal if the victim student and the guardian do not want a review committee to be convened. Otherwise, the School Violence Countermeasures Review Committee is convened. If the parties do not accept the committee's decision, they file an administrative suit to seek a court ruling.
An official at the administrative court said, "Many of the cases filed with the court involve school violence that is not light," but also noted, "Recently, there has been a growing tendency to cast disputes between students too broadly as school violence and turn them into conflicts."
The administrative court introduced a case in which it canceled a disposition by an office of education that had deemed conduct to be school violence when it could not be considered as such.
Plaintiff Student A was reported for school violence after telling Student B, "Makeup is tolerable, but your bare face is ugly," and "Your real look is so different from your photos that it's a scam," criticizing B's appearance. The administrative court said that while the reporting student may have felt displeased by the comments, such remarks should not be broadly subsumed under school violence—acts that cause mental suffering—and canceled all measures under the Act on the Prevention of and Countermeasures Against School Violence.
Plaintiff Student C was reported for school violence after saying during a retreat, when other students violated rules and ate, "That's f—ing ridiculous." The administrative court said such criticism is something the reporting students who caused the problem should accept, and that defining it as school violence would excessively infringe on C's freedom of expression, and therefore canceled the measures.