One in three South Korean women have experienced physical or sexual violence at least once during their lifetime, a government survey showed Thursday.
The gender ministry said the survey conducted in-person on 7,027 female adults nationwide from September to November last year showed that 36.1 percent of women had experienced violence at least once in their lifetime.
This marked a 0.9 percentage-point increase from the equivalent rate in 2021, when the survey did not include stalking as a category of violence.
The other categories were physical, sexual, emotional, and economic violence and manipulation.
Of them, sexual violence accounted for the largest proportion at 53.9 percent, followed by emotional violence at 49.3 percent, physical violence at 43.8 percent, manipulation at 14.3 percent, economic violence at 6.9 percent and stalking at 4.9 percent.
Nearly 20 percent of women experienced such assault from their intimate partners or ex-lovers, according to the survey.
"The reason for the increase in experiences of violence was the enhanced sensitivity to violence caused by the emergence of dating violence and deepfake sex crimes last year," said Cho Yong-soo, director of the ministry's Women's and Youth Rights Promotion Bureau. (Yonhap)
