Last year, 132,535 people took childcare leave, the highest number ever. The proportion of men taking childcare leave exceeded 30% for the first time in South Korea.

A survey has revealed that the percentage of men taking childcare leave in South Korea exceeded 30% for the first time last year.
On the 23rd, the number of employees was 256,771, up 17,242 (7.2%) from the previous fiscal year's 239,529. Of these, 132,535 were on childcare leave, and the number of employees in 2023 was 1,077.
This is an increase of 6,527 people (5.2%) from the previous year of 126,008. The number of people taking childcare leave, which had decreased slightly in 2023 due to the declining birth rate, increased again last year due to the expansion of the work-life balance system.
In particular, the number of men taking childcare leave was 41,829, accounting for 31.6% of the total, exceeding 30% for the first time since the system was implemented.
Considering that the number of men taking childcare leave in 2015 was 4,872 (5.6%), this represents a nearly nine-fold increase over nine years.
The upward trend continues this year. Since January 1st of this year, the number of men taking childcare leave for 30 business days has increased by 69.2% compared to the same period last year.
This is higher than the 42.6% increase in the number of people taking childcare leave. By age, the use of childcare leave is increasing for children under 12 months of age (those who need the most care from their parents).
0.0% (up 2.1 percentage points) of women took childcare leave when their children were 0 years old, and 46.5% of men (up 7.5 percentage points) took childcare leave. By company size, 75,000 women working for small and medium-sized enterprises took childcare leave last year.
The number of employees in companies with fewer than 100 employees was 60,128 (45.4%), up 0.9 percentage points from the previous year.
The average period is 8.8 months, 9.4 months for women and 7.6 months for men. Meanwhile, the number of people who reduced their working hours during childcare last year was 26,627, up 3,439 from 23,188 the previous year.
Although the number of users is smaller than those who take childcare leave, it increased by 14.8% last year, 2.8 times the increase rate of those who take childcare leave (5.2%). The system is particularly popular among small and medium-sized enterprises, with 62.8% of all recipients (
This was higher than the number of people taking childcare leave (56.8%).