According to the OECD data, South Korea’s utilization rate of day care centers for kids under 24 months stood at 50.5 percent as of 2009, the third highest figure among the member nations of the OECD. With Denmark with 83 percent and Sweden with 66 percent registered figures higher than South Korea‘s in terms of day care for under-two-year-olds.
The data are particularly troubling, as the percentage of working mothers in Denmark and Sweden reached 72 percent and 76.5 percent, compared with South Korea’s 29.9 percent.
The the government in March introduced the Nuri program to provide free kindergarten for all five-year-olds and free day care for kids under 24 months from this year. The program is scheduled to be expanded to include day care for three and four-year-olds starting in 2013, regardless of household incomes. Experts say that South Korea has long before exceeded the OECD‘s under-30-percent guideline for toddlers’ day care, warning that the day care utilization ratio is feared to skyrocket in the coming years due to the government‘s decision to offer free child care to all households regardless of their incomes.
“Children can open their eyes to the world through communion and care of their mothers. Communion built based on maternal affection can be the source of children’s capability to cope with reality and frustration,” Ahn Myoung-hee, a psychology professor at Sogang University, said, stressing the importance of domestic child care.
Experts say that a growing number of local mothers are expected to choose to capitalize on the subsidized child care program, regardless of their working and income status, increasing the risk of moral hazard in Korean society.
아주경제 앤드류 이 기자=
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com