That was a promotional line from a private academy for Children’s Day 2026. The day is meant for children, but the copy’s real beneficiary is the parent — more precisely, parental anxiety.
This year’s Children’s Day scene in the academy districts is familiar. Academies advertising special classes added that they would “maintain learning continuity and secure parents’ rest time.” It is Children’s Day, but children are not the subject of the sentence.
In a survey by the National Center for the Rights of the Child, four in 10 children said the thing they most wanted to do after school was “play with friends.” But only two out of 10 were actually able to do so. The rest went to academies. More than half of elementary school students cited academies and private tutoring as the biggest barrier to free play. Children know they want to play. They are simply not allowed to.
That time is filled with studying instead. Upper-grade elementary students study an additional average of 2 hours and 47 minutes a day after school ends. Middle school students study 3 hours and 12 minutes, and high school students 3 hours and 33 minutes. When out-of-school learning time is included, total daily study time far exceeds the OECD average. But studying longer does not necessarily mean doing better. In the 2022 PISA assessment, South Korean students studied much longer than Japanese students but scored lower in reading, math and science.
A UNICEF survey found South Korean children ranked 34th out of 36 OECD and EU countries in mental health, and 28th out of 40 countries in physical health. Academic competence ranked fourth. That gap is a portrait of children in South Korea today: among the world’s hardest-working students, and among the most exhausted. The child happiness index stands at 45.3 out of 100 — not even half.
Children who have lost playgrounds have moved into their smartphones. Half of upper-grade elementary students use smart devices for two hours or more after school. Four in 10 said it is hard to stop on their own. The figures rise for children who are alone more often. This is not a matter of willpower. Where alleys to run and play have disappeared, and where care has fallen away, algorithms have moved in.
It is difficult to blame parents. One mother who sends her child to an academy even on Children’s Day said, “Rather than having make-up classes scheduled later, it’s better to just go to the academy.” In that sentence is not greed but structural fear: the worry of falling behind if you rest alone, and the pressure that if everyone else goes, you cannot be the only one to skip. The academy industry operates precisely on that anxiety.
But when that anxiety becomes collective, Children’s Day quietly disappears. A day created for rest becomes a day when no one can rest.
In 1923, Bang Jeong-hwan wrote in the Children’s Day declaration: “Please let them sleep and exercise enough. Do not look down on children; look up to them.”
Now, 103 years later, those lines read less like advice than an indictment. For a long time, South Korean society has taught children first how to “endure well” — faster, more, earlier. To look up to children means seeing them not as units of competition, but as people fully present in this moment.
The country that created Children’s Day is failing to give it back to children. What has been taken is not just a day off, but childhood itself.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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