The Seoul Administrative Court has decided to operate four dedicated divisions to handle the recent surge in school violence cases.
The Seoul Administrative Court announced on the 16th that "in line with the regular judicial personnel reshuffle in February, we have expanded the dedicated school violence divisions from two to four." The dedicated school violence divisions, established in 2023, had been operating with two single-judge divisions until last year.
The dedicated divisions will operate under Administrative Divisions 1, 2, 3, and 5. Four presiding judges, all with more than 20 years of legal experience, have been assigned. These judges are known to have extensive experience working as judicial researchers in the Constitutional and Administrative Division of the Supreme Court and handling numerous administrative cases, including school violence cases, at various levels of courts. The dedicated divisions will designate hearing dates within one to two months after case filing, barring special circumstances, to process cases promptly.
The expansion of dedicated school violence divisions comes against the backdrop of increasing school violence cases. School violence cases from the Seoul area filed with the administrative court reached 134 last year. This represents an approximately 40% increase compared to 2024 (98 cases).
Additionally, there has been a growing tendency to excessively classify disputes among students as school violence, turning them into formal disputes. In fact, courts have recently been issuing rulings that overturn decisions by education support offices that determined certain actions to be school violence when they should not be classified as such. For example, courts have overturned school violence rulings in cases involving comments about appearance such as "You look okay with makeup, but you're ugly without it," cases of cursing or making derogatory remarks to classmates, and cases where someone used a friend's belongings and then said "You have no manners."
A court official stated, "The court has been working to establish desirable social directions for resolving school violence, not just handling individual cases, including by presenting standards for the meaning of school violence," adding, "With presiding judges assigned to all dedicated divisions, we expect more thorough deliberations and case resolutions."
