Nine out of 10 children with disabilities in South Korea do not attend day care, and fewer than 10% attend kindergarten. More than three in 10 parents of children with disabilities said they faced discrimination while enrolling their child in a care or education facility, fueling calls for both more facilities and measures to curb discrimination.
As of the end of last year, 90.4% of children with disabilities were not enrolled in day care, according to the 2026 Disability Statistics Yearbook released on Oct. 25 by the Korea Disabled People's Development Institute. Only 9.6% attended. By facility type, 4.2% attended general day care centers, 2.4% integrated centers for children with disabilities and 3.0% specialized centers for children with disabilities. A specialized center cares for 12 or more children with disabilities on a regular basis, while an integrated center enrolls children with disabilities up to 20% of capacity or three or more such children.
Kindergarten attendance was even lower. Some 91.9% of children with disabilities did not attend kindergarten, leaving an attendance rate of just 8.1%. Of those who did, 1.6% went to general kindergartens, 5.1% to special classes within general kindergartens and 1.4% to kindergarten programs at special schools. That marks a wide gap from the 2024 National Childcare Survey released last year by the Ministry of Education, which put day care attendance among all infants and toddlers at 55.3% and kindergarten attendance at 26.5%.
Demand for care has not eased. Children with disabilities numbered 92,094 last year, or 1.39% of the total child population of 6,644,957. While the overall child population is shrinking, the number of children with disabilities has been rising since 2017.
Specialized care facilities, by contrast, have stalled. The number of specialized day care centers for children with disabilities fell by one, from 177 in 2025 to 176 last year. The number of children with disabilities enrolled at those centers also dropped, to 5,699 last year from 5,895 in 2024. Integrated centers grew by 112 over the same period, to 1,830 from 1,718, yet the number of children with disabilities they actually served fell to 6,736 from 6,857. More facilities, in other words, have not translated into wider use by children with disabilities.
Beyond the shortage of facilities, social discrimination is also cited as a constraint on access to care and education. In the survey, 32.4% of children with disabilities or their guardians said they had experienced discrimination when enrolling in or transferring to a kindergarten or other care or education facility. Another 34.3% reported discrimination when entering or transferring to elementary school. More than half, 53.3%, said they had been discriminated against by peers during school life, while 21.0% said they had experienced discrimination from teachers.