'You'll never get into college': Counter-reports surge as school violence system becomes a legal battlefield [School Violence Survival Game ②]

School Violence Survival Game ② — A parent's perspective

A zero-tolerance approach to school violence has turned classrooms into a ruthless survival game. As even minor disputes are funneled into disciplinary committees, case volumes have exploded — yet the most common outcome is a finding of "not school violence," leaving schools unable to resolve conflicts on their own. Caught in a proxy legal war waged by adults desperate to protect their children's college prospects, students have traded apologies and reconciliation for evidence-gathering. This series examines the structural contradictions of a school violence system that has lost sight of victim protection and sunk into judicialization — told through four conflicting perspectives: parents, lawyers, teachers and students.

2026-06-09 17:34:56

A parent consults with a lawyer over a school violence case. [Generated with ChatGPT]

By Kim Yong-jae, The Herald Business

"My child was reported for school violence by a classmate they had a bad relationship with. The other student repeatedly broke promises, made my child wait 30 minutes each time and then mocked them — and when my child sent an angry text with profanity, that became the evidence. The other parent refuses to settle, and their child is going around saying, 'You'll never get into college.' What can I do?"

Those are the words of Parent A, a 45-year-old who raised a child in the Gangnam area of Seoul and was once caught up in litigation over a school violence case. When Parent A shared the dilemma with other parents, the advice came back nearly unanimous: "File a counter-report first," "Start collecting evidence," "If they reported you, we have to report them back."

The days of school violence proceedings centering on healing and student guidance are long gone. In their place, counter-reporting — known colloquially as "mat-hakpok," or retaliatory school violence complaints — has become in effect the standard playbook among parents. It is no longer an exception.

Data on school violence submitted to the office of People Power Party lawmaker Jeong Seong-guk by the Ministry of Education show that of the 30,667 cases reviewed by school violence committees in the 2024 academic year, 5,464 involved mutual complaints — where the accused party filed a counter-report against the original complainant. Roughly one in five school violence disputes now ends up as a two-way complaint.

Trend in the number of cases where no measures were taken for victim students

'Block the record first': A legal war that starts outside school

Once a counter-report is filed, a case stops being about identifying a victim and a perpetrator and becomes a mutual blame contest.

Parent B, from Songpa-gu, who went through administrative litigation over a school violence case, described the experience: "At first I thought it was just a kids' quarrel, but before I knew it we were gathering evidence and hiring a lawyer. A legal war was already being fought outside the school before the committee even convened."

Analysts say the pressure of college admissions lies at the heart of why parents react so sharply to counter-reports and legal maneuvering.

Universities have increasingly factored school violence disciplinary records into their admissions processes, creating an atmosphere in which any such record is seen as a potentially fatal risk to a student's college prospects.

Once a lawyer enters the picture, there is no going back — and both sides feel they have no choice but to retain legal counsel to protect their child's admissions record.

Parent online communities are filled with posts that reflect this anxiety: "Once a report is filed, I'm less worried about the facts than whether it ends up in the school record," "Even if it's unfair, the priority is blocking the record," "If the other side has hired a lawyer, we need one too," and "Once a legal representative gets involved, you can't back down."

A performance precedes a press briefing on the 2026 school violence survey held at the Blue Tree Foundation in Seoul. [Yonhap]

Remorse and recovery fade as school violence committees lose their way

Educators and school officials are raising alarms that school violence disputes have moved beyond the realm of student conflict resolution and mutated into adversarial proceedings dominated by parents and lawyers.

The very rules strengthened to protect victims have paradoxically created a cycle of reports, counter-reports, evidence collection and legal responses, they say.

"The stronger the school violence system becomes, the louder the calls grow to vindicate students who feel wrongly accused," one education official said. "The problem is that in that process, reports and counter-reports keep multiplying, every case escalates into a legal dispute, and the victim who actually needed protection ends up disappearing from the picture."

The school violence system was not built to punish children — it was built to bring them back to school. Yet in today's classrooms, reports and legal defenses come before remorse and recovery, and evidence and lawyers are summoned before dialogue and mediation.

brunch@heraldcorp.com