South Korean students are exposed to violence mostly through movies and TV programs, a survey showed on Wednesday.

The study, conducted on 3,115 elementary and middle school students, creates food for thought for policymakers and parents, many of whom vehemently view video and online games as the primary transmitter of violent images.

The survey, which allowed multiple responses, reported that 66.6 percent of respondents said movies were the medium through which they have seen violent scenes the most. Trailing behind in the rankings are TV programs with 59.2 percent and computer games at 46.8 percent.

Study leader Hwang Ok-gyeong, a professor in the Department of Child Care and Education at Seoul Theological University, said the results were the exact opposite of her predictions.

“The findings show that the students are exposed to violence more through movies and television than computer games, which we expected to be a main factor,” Hwang said. “Monitoring production and broadcasting regulations is needed to create a healthy environment for pop culture.”

The survey also looked into a specific violent scene ― murder. The results remained more or less the same, except for a far smaller portion being games: 63.2 percent said they saw murder scenes mostly through films, followed by TV programs with 44.5 percent and computer games with 24.2 percent.

A co-researcher for the study, Yang Kyung-hae, said the survey aimed to find causes for school violence and to work out countermeasures.

For social network services, less than 10 percent of respondents said they saw violence and murder scenes on the fast-growing digital platform. The lower figure suggests that SNS is not delivering as many violent images as other media.

But the survey found that 20.6 percent of respondents experienced verbal abuse on SNS, a different type of harmful behavior that might worry parents.

The greater role of movies in delivering violent images to youngsters is surprising given that Korean students are rarely allowed to watch movies due to their tight schedules focused almost entirely on getting high academic scores and entering more prestigious colleges.

By Park Han-na (hnpark@heraldcorp.com)