Students with a history of bullying will be penalised during entrance exams at the prestigious Korea University from 2025, in a bid to clamp down on the rise in school bullying in South Korea.

The university’s president Kim Dong-won said on March 21 that such students will face a deduction of up to 20 points in the entrance exam, Seoul Economic Daily reported.

The school’s academic affairs committee will deduct a maximum of 20 points from the scores of applicants who were expelled or had a forced transfer due to bullying, Yonhap News Agency said.

The university is one of South Korea’s top three prestigious schools. The other two are Seoul National University and Yonsei University.

Mr Kim told a press conference that applicants who have been disciplined for school violence do not embody the university’s ideals of “altruism, leadership and community”.

“Currently, even a 0.1-point difference can affect the outcome (of an admission), so a deduction of 20 points would practically make admission impossible,” he said.

The percentage of Seoul students who said they had been targeted by a bully – or iljin in Korean – hit a high in the past 10 years, according to a 2023 Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (Smoe) study.

The survey of 486,729 students, between the fourth grade of elementary school and the final year of high school, found that 2.2 per cent had experienced some form of mistreatment at school. The figure increased by 2 per cent compared with 2022, and marked a 10-year high.

Verbal abuse was the most common form of school violence, followed by physical abuse and bullying.

Smoe attributed the rise in cases to students’ return to in-person classes after years of online classes during the Covid-19 pandemic.

An official said students had fewer chances to interact with their friends during the pandemic and Smoe believed this led to the higher tendency of violence towards those who have more difficulty addressing conflicts.

To combat the growing cases, measures like having students’ bullying records reflected in the college admissions process from the 2026 academic year were rolled out in 2023.

The South Korean government has also considered extending the bullying record retention period so that the black mark will follow the perpetrators when they apply for jobs.

In recent years, some celebrities have also been embroiled in bullying scandals.

For example, in 2021, actor Ji Soo was dropped from an ongoing drama after admitting to being a bully and “sex predator” in school.

In 2022, K-pop singer Garam had to leave the five-member girl group Le Sserafim after being accused of bullying in middle school.

Volleyball stars Lee Jae-yeong and Lee Da-yeong were banned by the national team in 2021 after it was confirmed that the twin sisters had bullied their teammates in middle school.

The school-bullying phenomenon is the subject of hit Netflix drama series The Glory (starring Song Hye-kyo), which tells the story of a woman who seeks revenge on her high school bullies after 17 years.

The series’ director Ahn Gil-ho was later accused of bullying and admitted to having physically assaulted younger students when he was in high school.