Stalking, confinement, assault and killings targeting spouses keep occurring during divorce proceedings in South Korea, yet no separate statistics exist on domestic violence that takes place while a divorce suit is pending. With about half of those who have divorced, separated or ended cohabitation reporting violence from their partner, critics say the government needs both data and protection measures for people in the middle of divorce cases.
Police do not separately track domestic violence occurring during divorce proceedings, according to material the Korean National Police Agency submitted to the office of Rep. Kang Myung-koo of the People Power Party, a member of the National Assembly's Public Administration and Security Committee, on the 20th. The Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Crimes of Domestic Violence defines family members to include "a spouse or former spouse," but there is no means of gauging the scale of such cases.
Under police criminal investigation rules, the integrated assessment form used to decide emergency and provisional measures at domestic violence scenes has no category for divorce under "case type." By contrast, cases involving "a person in a de facto marital relationship," also covered by the definition of family members, are tracked separately. The only mention of divorce on the form appears in interviews with victims, where divorce, custody disputes and court orders are listed as examples of "factors that aggravate the offender's behavior."
Crimes including stalking, confinement, aggravated assault and killings have repeatedly occurred during divorce proceedings, prompting calls for measures grounded in relevant statistics. In August 2024, a man in his 40s who had been placed under a provisional measure after breaking into the home of a woman in her 30s in the middle of a divorce case and assaulting her returned to the victim again and was detained and referred to prosecutors on charges of stalking and violating the domestic violence punishment act. Last year, a man in his 30s who had been warned after going to the home of a woman involved in a divorce suit went on to send dozens of text messages and place calls, and even booked a table at the business she ran, before being referred to prosecutors on stalking charges.
Concerns have deepened further after a case this month in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, in which a man went to the home where his wife had taken refuge from domestic violence and stabbed her to death with a knife. Police believe the suspect went to the victim's temporary address as written on the divorce complaint to commit the crime. The case drew public outrage in particular because the suspect was found to have acted while the couple's young child watched.
Despite the repeated crimes during divorce proceedings, divorce remains no more than one of the listed examples of factors that aggravate abusive behavior on the current assessment form. A National Police Agency official said, "It is hard to treat divorce alone as putting a case in the high-risk category for domestic violence," while adding, "Given that these cases are occurring, we are discussing internally whether to manage divorce-related information as a separate classification or statistic."
The share of women who have experienced violence around the time of a breakup keeps rising, adding to calls for action. According to the 2025 Survey on Domestic Violence released by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family in July, 50.0% of those who had divorced, separated or ended cohabitation experienced at least one form of physical, sexual, economic or emotional violence from a spouse or partner around the time of the breakup. Compared with 2022, the share among women rose to 59.6% from 54.5%, while the share among men fell to 40.0% from 47.4%.
Some 80.9% of those who experienced violence said they had never sought outside help, raising concerns that they remain continuously exposed to harm. The survey found that the share who turned to "police" stood at 1.1%, far below "neighbors or friends" at 10.7% and "family or relatives" at 10.1%. The most common reason for not turning to police was "I just needed to get through that moment" at 62.8%, followed by "I did not think the violence was serious" at 57.3% and "I thought of my children" at 35.9%, indicating that victims struggle to report cases to police.
Park Ji-young, a partner attorney at law firm Heunmoe, said, "The point when an offender is served with a divorce complaint, or when a victim leaves home and begins living apart, can act as the most dangerous trigger for serious retaliatory crimes." Park added, "When a divorce suit is under way with an offender who has a record of domestic violence, there is a need to actively deploy preemptive and robust protection measures with police and the courts that go beyond ordinary reporting."
