The Relationships between Domestic Violence Victimization and Violence of Military Service Members in South Korea

This study aims at investigating the impact of prior domestic violence victimization experience on violence of military persons in South Korea. The key dependent variable of violence was measured in terms of both the subjective perception toward aggressions for the military setting and objective violent behaviors that military service members had committed. This present study utilized the “Victim- Offender Overlapping Theory” as a crucial theory framework in order to identify the relationships between prior domestic violence victimization experience and problematic behaviors of the military service members. The total 108 soldiers and military service members were participated in the self-reported survey for the analysis. The survey was conducted for approximately a month in May, 2025. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression were utilized in order to examine the association between the prior domestic violence victimization experience and aggressive behaviors in the military setting. Result demonstrates that age(+), direct victimization(-) and indirect victimization(-) experience are statistically significant factors that are related to the violent behaviors of military service members when other variables are controlled. Interestingly, the direction of direct domestic victimization and indirect domestic violence victimization experience were not consistent in terms of the relationships with violence behaviors in the context of military environment. Further policy implications will be discussed.