This chapter focusses on three interconnected opportunity areas for further improving inclusive, sustainable well-being outcomes in Korea: Supporting young Koreans’ ability to thrive in their transition from education to adult independence; promoting good mental health and social connectedness across the Korean population; and addressing the social and structural factors hindering gender equality. The Korean Government already has established plans and programmes in these areas, but insights from OECD recommendations and international good practice taking a more holistic, people‑focussed, and preventative approach can help further strengthen the effectiveness of policy interventions.
Inclusive and Sustainable Well‑being in Korea
30 Years of OECD Membership and Future Policy Opportunities
Abstract
Korea has made significant advances in improving inclusive and sustainable well-being for its population in the last three decades, as demonstrated in Chapters 2 and 3. However, the previous chapters also highlighted areas where Korea’s outcomes fall below the OECD average, representing opportunities to further improve well-being, inclusion and sustainability, either by strengthening recent progress in narrowing the performance gap or counteracting negative trends. This chapter focusses on three areas that emerged from the previous analysis as being particularly important in Korea, namely:
Supporting young people to thrive in their transition from education to work and independent adulthood. The youth economic inactivity rate is relatively high in Korea, despite progress in recent years, and national data show that young Korean adults face declining relative incomes and rising levels of debt. High work pressure for workers of all ages, as exemplified by long working hours, also increases the challenge of maintaining a career and positive work-life balance for young people.
Promoting good mental health and social connectedness, both at the population level and for different groups. Suicide rates are high for both men and women, and suicide rates for children and adolescents have begun to rise in recent years. Data show increasing levels of worry among young people, and particularly young women. Youth loneliness is also on the rise, and social support from friends and family (e.g. having someone to count on for help in times of need) tends to be much lower for middle‑aged and older Koreans than for their peers in other OECD countries.
Addressing social and structural factors in gender equality. Despite progress in recent years, Korea still performs below the OECD average in terms of female labour force participation, the gender wage gap, and female representation in economic and political decision making. Available data also indicate that the prevalence of intimate partner violence is relatively high in Korea compared with other OECD countries, and the prevalence of attitudes that uphold gender divisions in work and family life is higher in Korea than other OECD countries, for both men and women.
These areas are already recognised as high priority challenges by the Korean Government, and a number of previous OECD reports have addressed relevant aspects from a sectoral policy perspective, including the consideration of necessary reforms and policy recommendations in the education and skills, labour market, and healthcare sectors (e.g. (OECD, 2026[1]; 2024[2]; 2024[3]; 2022[4]; 2020[5]; 2019[6])). Previous OECD work has also focussed in depth on the sectoral reforms necessary to adapt to broader demographic trends such as declining fertility rates and population ageing in Korea, which shapes drivers and outcomes across all these areas, and particularly for gender equality and youth well-being (e.g. (OECD, 2025[7]; 2024[2]; 2022[8]; 2019[9]). The purpose of this chapter is to build on this previous work, recognising necessary sectoral reform but also assessing the challenges from a well-being informed perspective (see Chapter 1) that highlights the value of cross-cutting, equity-focussed, people‑focussed, and long-term preventative approaches alongside sector-specific reform efforts. The chapter also underlines that these challenges are not self-contained but rather highly interconnected: for example, gender is an important determining factor for the drivers and outcomes of youth well-being as well as mental health and social connectedness through the life course and supporting young adults to thrive also means addressing their mental and social well-being alongside their employability and material living standards. The remainder of this chapter will address each issue in more detail, outlining the context for Korean Government efforts to date, and providing selected policy insights as summarised in Table 4.1.
The Korean Government has implemented cross-cutting action to support young people’s transition to adulthood
As set out in Chapter 3, young Koreans face challenges across multiple fronts when making the transition from full-time education to work and adult life, and particularly in terms of their ability to access secure work that matches their skills and provides a wage to keep pace with high living costs. While the challenges of this transition for young people are not unique to Korea, the particular difficulty in moving into economic and social independence in Korea is evident in the fact that 81% of young Koreans aged 20‑29 lived with their parents in 2020, largely unchanged from a similar share (79%) in 2006. This is the largest proportion of young people living at home amongst OECD countries and well above the OECD average of 50% in 2022 (up from 45% in 2006) (OECD, 2024[10]).
The 1998 financial crisis led to an increase in youth unemployment and youth inactivity in Korea, and since the early 2000s every Korean political administration has launched policy packages to boost youth employment. In recent years, the scope of these packages has broadened to encompass the creation of greater youth-specific employment and training opportunities, the prevention of unfair hiring and employment practices that discriminate against young people, the provision of asset-building support and access to affordable housing for young people transitioning to financial independence, and expanding the range of opportunities for young people to participate in political decision making (Min-kyung, 2025[11]; Jones and Beom, 2022[12]).
Education does not guarantee young people can achieve the career and build the life they aspire to
As Chapter 3 showed, young Koreans experience significant pressure to attain prestigious academic qualifications and then face fierce competition for a limited number of high-quality jobs in a highly polarised labour market. With the most desirable jobs in the public and private sectors tending to go to graduates with specific diplomas from select universities, those who are unable to follow this pathway struggle. A 2020 Ministry of Data and Statistics survey found that only 20% of young working Koreans aged under 29 years earned a salary significantly above the minimum wage, with the remaining 80% earning salaries that were close to or significantly below minimum wage (Han, 2020[13]). It also found that despite industry consensus that attaining a minimum of three years in the first job after graduation is a requisite for young workers to move to a new position with good conditions, around 7 in 10 graduate employees left their first job after just over a year (13.8 months on average). The most common reasons given by young workers for quitting their first job were “dissatisfaction with working conditions such as compensation and working hours” (47.7%), followed by “personal and family reasons such as health, childcare, and marriage” (14.3%) and “completion of temporary or seasonal work, end of contract period” (12.4%) (Han, 2020[13]). The top pathway for young Koreans preparing for employment in 2020 was the public sector examination, as the stability of public sector employment makes it an attractive choice for young Koreans, despite relatively low wages (Han, 2020[13]). Finally, while the share of people without tertiary education is relatively low in Korea, those who enter the labour market with upper secondary education or below face especially limited job opportunities with precarious conditions, as well as facing societal marginalisation given the great value placed on university education in Korean society (Jo, 2017[14]). The high value placed on academic achievement in specific degree areas at the expense of a greater diversity of vocational course and general skills-building education means that students with lower academic performance have fewer pathways to employability (Jo, 2017[14]). More broadly speaking, this also contributes to the high degree of mismatch between the skills young people acquire through the education system and those demanded employers, as described in Chapter 3, which in turn leads to ongoing youth disengagement from the labour market.
The difficulties young people face in entering the labour market are currently taking place against a backdrop of increased cost-of-living and economic disadvantage. Since the pandemic, the debt levels of young people in their 20s and 30s has grown much faster than their income and assets, one likely driver of which is increased rental deposit costs (Yoo, 2023[15]). For many young Koreans, the seemingly insurmountable difficulty of meeting their career or material aspirations has led to a phenomenon of opting out from traditional life goals, activities and milestones in young adulthood. This has been referred to successively as first the sampo generation or “three giving-up generation” (referring to the postponement or bypassing of courtship, marriage, and childbearing),1 the 5‑po generation (also giving up home ownership and social relationships), the 7‑po generation (also giving up on dreams and hopes) and finally the N-po generation, referring to the act of giving up on an unlimited number of things beyond those specified in other iterations. Beyond the broader economic productivity implications, this act of generational disengagement also has individual well-being implications, including for mental health and social connectedness. These issues will be addressed in more detail later in this chapter but are an important aspect of the broader challenges facing young people’s transition to economic independence.
Improving equality of opportunity for young adults
The OECD Recommendation for Creating Better Opportunities for Young People (adopted by all OECD countries in June 2022) promotes cross-government co‑ordination for policy action across five pillars: skills and competencies; support for young people within the labour market; social inclusion and youth well-being; trust of young people in government institutions; and administrative and technical capacities to address age‑based discrimination (OECD, 2020[16]). Improving equality of opportunity for young adults therefore requires sector-specific reform in the education and labour markets, as well as cross-cutting action to address the broader, interlinked drivers of youth well-being.
The Korean Government has taken a number of steps to support young people’s career planning and boost employability through education reform and the development and mobilisation of relevant skills. These include additional public funding for career guidance and counselling in secondary schools, the (re) introduction of apprenticeships and specialised vocational high schools (or Meister schools) to strengthen vocational education and training, incentives for tertiary institutions to offer more labour-market relevant degrees, and efforts to promote more competency-based (rather than credential-based) recruitment practices by employers (OECD, 2019[6]).2 However educational and skills-based reforms on their own cannot overcome the mismatch between employers’ demands and young people’s educational and career aspirations, which is fundamentally driven by entrenched labour market duality in Korea (OECD, 2022[4]). As discussed in Chapter 3, Korea’s labour market is sharply divided between a small share of regular employment opportunities (characterised by high wages, social insurance coverage and strong employment protection, and tending to be concentrated in a limited number of large companies) and a larger share of non-regular work (offering lower wages and weaker access to social insurance and employment protection, often in smaller businesses). Addressing these inequalities in job quality and security – which are in part an outcome of the structure of the Korean private sector – is a complex undertaking. However, ensuring wider and more equal access to social insurance coverage and training for non-regular workers would help to equalise access to good-quality work (OECD, 2026[1]; 2022[4]). This in turn would reduce the pressure on young people to obtain a “golden ticket” regular contract and take steps to address the economic insecurity risks of those in non-regular work (OECD, 2022[4]). In addition to these structural reform efforts in the education and employment sectors, policies to support youth well-being in Korea could be reinforced by:
Continuing efforts to provide more comprehensive integrated support for young people’s transition to adulthood
Fostering trust and youth participation in decision making; and,
Continuing efforts to improve data on young people’s lives.
Continuing efforts to provide more comprehensive integrated support for young people’s transition to adulthood
The OECD Youth Recommendation emphasises the importance of co‑ordinated cross-government action to create better opportunities for young people (OECD, 2020[16]). As previously mentioned, recent Korean youth support policy packages have linked measures to support skills and employability with broader actions to support young people’s economic independence, access to housing, and civic engagement. Underpinning these efforts has been a shift away from isolated short-term interventions, and a greater emphasis on integrated, long-term strategies on youth policy, led by the Office for government Policy Co‑ordination since 2019 (Jones and Beom, 2022[12]). One way to further strengthen cross-government co‑ordination on youth well-being could be to ensure that efforts by different Ministries to address mental health and social connectedness risks for young adults are closely linked to efforts to support employment and economic independence. Emphasising mental health and social connectedness in integrated job-seeking approaches can bring “win-win” outcomes that increase young people’s employment chances at the same time as boosting their mental and social well-being (see also Box 4.11 in the next section).
Access to mental health counselling and resources is already integrated in Korean youth employment support to a certain extent. For example, the Youth Challenge Support Programme, managed by the Ministry of Employment and Labour, focusses on boosting employment outcomes for discouraged job-seekers through access to mentoring, skills development and psychological counselling (Ministry of Employment and Labour, 2025[17]). Since 2014, Korea has also been progressively transforming its Employment Centres into Employment Welfare Plus Centres with expended services beyond job-seeking support such as access to social welfare services as well as stress management resources offered by private sector providers (as of 2024, 100 of Korea’s 174 Employment Centres had become Employment Welfare Plus Centres) (OECD, 2024[3]). Box 4.1 describes further examples from the non-governmental sector in Korea, as well as government initiatives in Finland and other countries, which provide potential models for deepening existing efforts through the provision of long-term, individualised, person-centred and comprehensive support to boost youth employability at the same time as mental health and social connectedness outcomes.
Onni (Happiness) services provided through Ohjaamo centres, Finland
Finland first piloted the model of universal one‑stop guidance centres, called “Ohjaamo” in 2014, and the programme had been expanded to include 70 local Ohjaamo centres by 2022 (OECD, 2024[18]). Ohjaamo centres provide multi‑agency services that bring together income support access, housing, education and training, as well as mental or physical healthcare, social events, sport and creative activities. The centres are designed so as to make access to support as easy as possible for young people, who do not require an appointment to seek assistance, and the support provided emphasises face‑to-face interaction, listening to feedback from young people, and adapting support to the young people’s own pace and preferences. Onni (meaning “Happiness” in Finnish) refers to a range of psychological and social well-being support services provided by Ohjaamo centres for 18‑29 year‑olds, on an individual and group basis, and available face‑to-face and online. Services are free of charge and no diagnosis is required, and include stress management groups, online peer support sessions, peer support, and individualised long-term coaching to find steps to support the young person’s well-being and mental well-being (Ohjaamo, 2025[19]).
Combining social connection and employment experience: NEET Lifers, Seoul
NEET Lifers is a Seoul-based non-profit initiative which aims to help young people who are not in employment, education, or training (NEET) reconnect with others and gain the confidence to reintegrate in work and social activities (Shin, Pyo and Kim, 2024[20]). The initiative was initially based on the creation of a fictional “NEET Company” in 2019, where young unemployed adults were recruited as “employees”, allowing them to role play a hiring process, work experience, and a leaving process in positive ways. An evaluation of the initial programme found that participants completing the NEET Company programme experienced increased perceived social support, resilience, and self-esteem. Since then, NEET Lifers has expanded the programme. Participants adopt a daily routine, similar to those in the workplace, checking in and out online every day, reporting their work, and regularly meeting with colleagues. Each participant sets work goals for themselves (such as studying a foreign language, painting, exercising, or washing dishes) and participates in social activities such as visiting exhibitions with their colleagues. A typical programme lasts 3‑4 months, after which participants attend a closing ceremony to share their work and experiences and celebrate their achievements with each other. NEET Lifers has also created participant-led programmes, such as NEET Office, an offline community where young people work in groups, and NEET Connect, an online community where unemployed young people meet and develop projects together. As of 2024 the organisation had reached 2 000 young people (NEET People, 2025[21]).
Vision Plan Programme
The Vision Plan Programme was a pilot youth employment support programme developed by the Community Chest of Korea, Korea’s only government-sanctioned charity which acts as the largest welfare institution in the country. The programme ran from 2016 to 2018, with a prevention component targeted at 14‑19 year‑olds, and an employment support component targeted at 20‑24 year‑olds, with a particular focus on young people from vulnerable backgrounds such as social welfare recipients, and young people from single‑parent or low-income families. The programme took a people‑focussed and integrated multidimensional approach to the drivers of youth unemployment, addressing psychological and social support needs alongside skills acquisition and job-seeking advice. Over an average of 21.5 months, each participant in the pilot co-developed a personalised “self-growth” plan with the support of advisors through counselling and case management meetings, which considered individual abilities, preferences, and aspirations. Accountability and self-monitoring provisions were included in the plans to incentivise individual responsibility and follow-through. Alongside academic and vocational training, a broad range of services and activities accompanied the process to help young people strengthen their physical and emotional well-being and help tackle the root causes of employment challenges they faced. Psychosocial support, music, and physical activity courses were provided as well as family coaching, and neighbourhood support through training and networking activities offered by trained community workers. A total of 1 780 people participated in the programme over the three years, of which around half were aged 14‑19 and half aged 20‑29 years. One evaluation of the programme’s impact on employment outcomes showed that participation resulted in a statistically significant increase in job-seeking intention, and a decreased probability of being neither in employment nor education (NEET) (OECD, 2024[18]).
Integrated work experience and mental health support: Individual Placement and Support (IPS) approaches, various countries
Individual Placement and Support (IPS) approaches have been piloted in a number of countries including Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and New Zealand. The IPS model is based on the provision of individualised job-seeking support for people receiving mental health treatment. It uses a multidisciplinary team, including both employment and mental health specialists, to work with jobseekers with mental health conditions to find employment and provide the support they need to develop the skills and training to remain in the job. Evidence on the impact of the small-scale initiatives conducted to date indicate positive employment outcomes, and the OECD recommends the more widespread and large‑scale application of IPS approaches, including the participation of jobseekers with mild-to-moderate mental health conditions (as most existing examples focus on support for individuals with severe mental health conditions) (OECD, 2023[22]; 2021[23]).
Fostering trust and youth participation in decision making
OECD work on the drivers of institutional trust across member countries has found that increasing the level of young people’s participation in political decision making is crucial to develop more inclusive policies, bridge intergenerational divides, and strengthen trust in government (OECD, 2024[24]). Youth representation in parliament is a particular challenge area for Korea, which has the lowest share of parliamentarians aged under 40 across OECD countries (5.7%, compared with an OECD average of 22% in 2024) (OECD, 2025[25]).
The 2022 OECD Youth Recommendation (OECD, 2020[16]) includes a number of concrete proposals for countries to foster institutional trust and participation in decision making for young people, including: awareness-raising efforts (including school-based interventions) to increase civic and citizenship literacy; reviewing voter registration rules and minimum voting age requirements; introducing mandatory youth quotas or voluntary targets in political party electoral lists to increase age diversity in parliamentary and executive bodies; organising awareness-raising campaigns to address ageism and stereotypes against young people in public and political life; safeguarding youth rights and strengthening media and digital literacy to help combat political misinformation and address the risk of polarisation and disassociation from civic and democratic institutions; ensure that public communications are clear and accessible to young people, adopting methods that are tailored to their needs and interests; adopting or strengthening youth advisory bodies and other youth engagement opportunities; and exploring innovative youth engagement and communication methods such as deliberative processes or digital tools.
The Korean Government has taken steps to strengthen young people’s voice in government such as through the creation of the Youth Policy Co‑ordination Committee and the lowering of the minimum voting age from 19 to 18 in 2020 (Jones and Beom, 2022[12]). Some countries have developed co‑ordinated national youth engagement strategies based on a whole‑of-government framework to improve youth participation and representation in decision making. Box 4.2 gives examples from Ireland and Slovenia of government-wide strategies to foster youth participation.
National Strategy on Children and Young People’s Participation in Decision Making, Ireland
In 2015, Ireland introduced the National Strategy on Children and Young People’s Participation in Decision-Making, recognising children and young people not as “beings in becoming” but as “citizens of today” with the right to be heard throughout childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood. Developed by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs (now the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth), this whole‑of-government strategy aimed to promote active participation in decision making across community, education, health, legal, and well-being settings. Primarily targeting those under 18, the Strategy also includes young people up to age 24. It is grounded in a rights-based approach (based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child)1 aligned with Lundy’s Model of Participation (see Figure 4.1).
To support implementation, Hub na nÓg, a national centre of excellence, was established to build capacity among service providers and policymakers through tailored coaching, advice, and training. The Strategy outlined 99 actions, assigning responsibilities across government departments and promoting cross-sectoral collaboration. Implementation relied on four key enablers: organisational support, training for decision makers, dedicated resources, and monitoring systems. Building on this foundation, the 2021 National Framework for Children and Young People’s Participation in Decision-Making, developed by Hub na nÓg and Queen’s University Belfast, was developed to provide practical government-wide guidance for involving children and young people in shaping policies, laws, services, and research. The final review, published in January 2023, found that 92 of 99 actions had been substantially progressed and that the Strategy proved effective in embedding participatory practices across government. Children and young people were consulted on diverse issues, including family justice reform, mask-wearing in schools, skin cancer research, youth homelessness, school transport, and anti-bullying policies. Over half of Tusla (the Child and Family Agency) staff completed participation training. A public consultation for the next strategy was also held in early 2023.
Source: Hub na nÓg (Irish national centre of excellence and co‑ordination in children and young people’s participation in decision making) (2025), Participation Framework, https://hubnanog.ie/participation-framework/. The Framework is based on the child rights model of participation developed by Professor Laura Lundy, Queens University to conceptualise a pathway to Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Improving youth participation in and awareness of policy issues through a cross-cutting National Youth Strategy, Slovenia
Slovenia does not have a standalone cross-sectoral national strategy on youth participation in decision making but the topic has been prominently featured in cross-sectoral national strategies such as the National Youth Programme 2013-2022, and the National Child and Youth Programme 2020-2025. For example, a key objective of the National Programme for Youth 2013-2022 was to promote the participation and representation of young women and men including increasing youth voter turnout at all levels and reducing the share of young people (aged 18‑29) who abstain. The broader goal was to boost youth engagement with policy decision making, encompassing five priority areas:
Promoting conventional political participation, ensuring gender balance. Funded by national and local budgets, this area focusses on involving youth in public life to develop democratic skills like consultation, negotiation, and lobbying.
Supporting unconventional political participation through existing legal mechanisms. Many young people are unaware of options for engagement due to low interest or lack of information. Efforts should promote awareness and participation through channels such as online governance platforms and youth organisations (e.g. youth centres, councils).
Strengthening mechanisms for youth consultation such as structured dialogue, to improve co‑operation between youth and policymakers and ensure meaningful input from youth, youth organisations, researchers, and decision makers across all levels.
Raising awareness of youth participation by addressing poor information about opportunities for engagement and promoting active citizenship.
Enhancing information and consultation in the youth sector. Providing accessible, timely information to empower youth to participate in society. This includes involving youth organisations and NGOs in education, the workplace, and civic processes such as elections and political dialogue.
Implementation was shared across various authorities, with the Ministry of the Interior and the Office of the Republic of Slovenia for Youth taking the lead, in collaboration with institutions such as the National Youth Council and local youth councils. Evaluations of the effectiveness of the strategy concluded that overall the Programme has had a significant impact on the perception of young people in public policymaking and implementation processes, and has raised awareness among key stakeholders of their specific needs and interests.
1. Article 12 of the UNCRC states that “States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child” and “For this purpose, the child shall in particular be provided the opportunity to be heard in any judicial and administrative proceedings affecting the child, either directly, or through a representative or an appropriate body, in a manner consistent with the procedural rules of national law”.
Source: OECD (2024[18]), OECD Youth Policy Toolkit, https://doi.org/10.1787/74b6f8f3-en; Hub na nÓg (Irish national centre of excellence and co‑ordination in children and young people’s participation in decision making) (2025), Participation Framework, https://hubnanog.ie/participation-framework/, European Commission (2025), National Strategy to increase youth participation, Youth Wiki: Slovenia, https://national-policies.eacea.ec.europa.eu/youthwiki/chapters/slovenia/55-national-strategy-to-increase-youth-participation.
Continuing existing efforts to improve data on young people’s lives
The design of effective policy interventions to support young people requires granular and comprehensive data on youth outcomes. The Korean Ministry of Data and Statistics currently conducts a number of surveys, including the Comprehensive Survey on Children (covering ages 0‑17, every three years), the Comprehensive Survey on Youth (covering ages 9‑24, every three years) and the Youth Life Survey (covering ages 19‑34, every 2 years). Results from these different surveys have been published in a Child and Youth Well-being report in 2022 and 2025 (Ministry of Data and Statistics, 2025[26]).
Relevant one‑off surveys have also been conducted by other government departments, such as the 2022 Youth Life Survey managed by the government Office for Policy Co‑ordination (National Assembly Budget Office, 2024[27]), and the Survey on Isolated and Reclusive Youth conducted by the National Youth Policy Institute in 2024 (Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, 2025[28]). While these were one‑time surveys, the Social Survey by the Ministry of Data and Statistics included questions on loneliness, social isolation, and reclusion for all age groups for the first time in 2025. In addition, provisions in the Act on Support for At-Risk Children and Youth Including Family Care, which is scheduled to be enforced in 2026, stipulate for a regular fact-finding survey on youth isolation to be conducted every three years.
One way to further strengthen the relevance of evidence informing youth policy is to integrate qualitative information on young people’s lived experiences, including at the sub-national level. This could be particularly useful for better understanding the reasons for youth disengagement from the labour market and other aspects of social participation in Korea. Box 4.3 gives an example from Sweden of such a data initiative for informing policy at the local level.
The LUPP Survey tool provides a data collection framework for local-level authorities to better understand the lived experience of young people in early to late adolescence, just before the transition to adulthood (it is primarily focussed on two age groups: 14‑15 year‑olds and 17‑18 year‑olds). Since its development in 2003, over 175 of Sweden’s 290 municipalities, covering more than 6% of the Swedish population, have implemented the survey. The survey questions have been selected to give insights across multiple life dimensions including the local enabling conditions for a good quality of life, opportunities for young people to influence these conditions, their sense of security, stress, thoughts about the future and other aspects including leisure, school, health and education. The survey is generally conducted every 2‑3 years to monitor progress and trends in these areas. Information from the surveys is used at the local-level to inform the development and evaluation of youth-oriented public services and programmes. An independent evaluation of the survey’s implementation and impact covering the 2015-2018 period showed that 81% of surveyed municipalities used the tool to make comparisons over time, 70% indicated that the survey has directly influenced the design and delivery of local youth policy and programmes, and 64% stated that the survey helped facilitate cross-sector collaboration in addressing youth issues in their area. The survey provides a bottom-up information source to complement national-level youth indicators from Statistics Sweden (which are made publicly available through a dedicated dashboard), which together provide an evidence base which is both spatially targeted and national in scope.
Source: OECD (2024[18]), OECD Youth Policy Toolkit, https://doi.org/10.1787/74b6f8f3-en.
Mental health has long been recognised as a policy priority in Korea, but suicide rates remain high and access to preventative non-crisis care remains limited by OECD standards
As Chapters 2 and 3 discussed, Korea has the highest rate of suicide among OECD countries. Suicide rates in Korea increased sharply following the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s and continued to rise in subsequent years. While comprehensive suicide prevention efforts have been enacted by the Korean Government3 and were successful in reducing overall rates between 2011 and 2017, these reductions have faltered in more recent years. The COVID‑19 pandemic further exacerbated mental health issues in Korea (as in all OECD countries): in 2020, 36.8% of Koreans reporting having depression or depression symptoms, which was the highest prevalence rate amongst 15 OECD countries with available data (OECD, 2021[29]). Suicide rates increased for Korean women and young people aged under 34 during the pandemic (Ryu et al., 2022[30]). Meanwhile, the limited data available in other OECD countries show that while young people experienced much higher suicidal ideation rates during the pandemic, in most OECD countries this did not translate to increases in deaths by suicide.4
Indeed, suicide rates for younger people are a priority concern in Korea. While suicide risk increases with age in Korea (as in other OECD countries) suicide became the leading cause of death for young Koreans from 2012 and rates have continued to increase since then,5 in contrast with global trends. Between 2000 and 2024, a time when global youth suicide rates decreased, Korea’s suicide rate for 10‑14 year‑olds multiplied almost four‑fold from 0.8 per 100 000 population to 3.5, and the rate for 15‑19 year‑olds doubled, from 6.3 to 12.6 (Ministry of Data and Statistics, 2025[31]). In 2019, 1 in 8 Korean adolescents (12.4%) had either experienced suicidal ideation or made a suicide attempt (Jung et al., 2019[32]). The recent rise in suicide rates of adolescent girls aged 10‑14 years is particularly worrying in Korea, more than tripling from 1.2 in 100 000 in 2017 to 4 in 100 000 in 2024 (Ministry of Data and Statistics, 2025[31]).
Mental healthcare in Korea has traditionally focussed heavily on inpatient crisis care, which differs from a trend in the majority of OECD countries to prioritise outpatient or community care. Between 2000 and 2018, the OECD average rate of psychiatric beds per 1 000 population fell from 0.86 to 0.69 yet over this same period Korea was the only OECD country to increase the number of psychiatric inpatient beds from an average 0.65 per 1 000 population in 2000 to 1.26 per 1 000 in 2018. The mental health workforce capacity is also relatively low in Korea, with 0.08 psychiatrists per 1 000 population in 2018 which was less than half the OECD average rate of 0.18 (OECD, 2021[29]). While in the majority of OECD countries, psychiatric inpatient stays tend to last between 10 and 40 days, the average length of stay in Korea is almost 6 months (176 days) (OECD, 2021[29]). The Korean healthcare payment system reimburses inpatient care at a higher rate than outpatient care, which is likely an important driver of the predominance and length of hospital admissions for psychiatric care (Kim, 2017[33]). A high rate of psychiatric admissions are involuntary in Korea (80% in 2017), with patients tending to be admitted by family members (Kim, 2017[33]), potentially indicating that mental health issues are less likely to be treated until a crisis situation has occurred.
In recent years, efforts have been made to change the approach to mental health policy. For example, in 2016, the Mental Health Act (first established in 1995) was entirely revised and its name was changed to the “Act on Mental Health Promotion and Support for Welfare Services for Persons with Mental Illness” in line with a broader emphasis on supporting preventative measures, and facilitating increased community-based care (Park, 2025[34]). Recent policy efforts to increase accessibility and affordability of outpatient preventative care include the introduction of targeted screenings for major mental disorders every two years for 20‑34 year‑olds to identify people who could benefit from early interventions, and the provision of counselling vouchers (covering from 70 to 100% of counselling costs depending on recipient income) to support individuals with moderate to severe depression, young people in the child welfare system, and those referred by mental health institutions (Khanh An, 2024[35]). Additional efforts include the establishment of the National Assembly Suicide Prevention Forum (created in 2018 to facilitate whole‑of-government co‑ordination and civil society collaboration), which led to a more than 6‑fold increase in the budgetary envelope for suicide prevention between 2017 and 2023 (Lee, Paik and Lee, 2024[36]) as well as the Mental Health Policy Innovation Committee (established in June 2024) to generate innovative strategies to improve mental healthcare systems, and including experts and individuals with lived experience of mental illness (Khanh An, 2024[35]).
Social isolation and loneliness have gained more policy attention in Korea in recent years
As the share of single‑person households has risen in Korea – reaching 36% of all households in 2024 – the issue of social isolation has gained more policy attention in recent years (Ministry of Data and Statistics, 2024[37]). In principle, a person can be socially isolated from a structural perspective (for example, living alone with few or little social contacts) without experiencing the negative feeling of loneliness, and vice versa: people can suffer from loneliness even when surrounded by others.6 However, social isolation and loneliness are connected, and both have negative impacts on well-being outcomes such as mental and physical health (OECD, 2025[38]).7 One 2021 Korean study found a clear association between social isolation and loneliness with mental health status, such as suicidal thoughts, depressive symptoms, and social anxiety symptoms. In the study, more than half (52.4%) of survey participants who felt lonely reported suicidal ideation, nearly five times more than the non-loneliness group (Kim et al., 2021[39]). Korean government data also show that average life satisfaction (rated on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest possible level of life satisfaction) for isolated and reclusive young people aged 19‑34 is only 3.7, around half of the overall average for the youth population in that age range (6.7) (National Assembly Budget Office, 2024[27]).
The phenomenon of rising “lonely deaths” in Korea, referring to deaths of people who live alone and remain undiscovered for a long period of time, led to the establishment of the 1st Master Plan for the Prevention of Lonely Deaths, launched in 2023 with the objective of reducing the number of lonely deaths by 20% (compared with a 2021 baseline of 1.06 lonely deaths per 100 people) (Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2023[40]). The Plan aims to take a similarly multi-faceted prevention approach as recent iterations of the Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Acts, including education and awareness-raising, and gatekeeper training for frontline health and public service personnel.
Rising levels of youth loneliness and broader social withdrawal in Korea – mirroring similar trends in many other OECD countries in recent years (OECD, 2024[41]) – have also garnered increased public and policy attention. In 2023, the government announced a cross-departmental package of support measures for socially isolated and reclusive youth as part of the overall 2023 youth support policy package, including: a pilot project led by the Ministry of Health and Welfare to provide one‑stop support centres for socially isolated youth (Youth Future Centres); the Youth Challenge Support Project for discouraged job-seekers, managed by the Ministry for Employment and Labour; the Culture Care Programme, encouraging participation in cultural activities to boost social connectedness, and enabling access for disconnected youth to dedicated support services (managed by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism); a customised student support system to allow early detection of at-risk students, implemented by the Ministry of Education, and a comprehensive support package for isolated adolescents aged 9‑19, including in-home counselling and education services tailored to adolescent characteristics, managed by the Ministry for Gender Equality and Family (National Assembly Budget Office, 2024[27]). A number of local governments (including Seoul, Gyeonggi, Daegu and Gwangju) had already been identifying isolated and reclusive youth through their own surveys and implementing support programmes (such as customised counselling through locally established youth centres) even before the launch of the various national support measures (National Assembly Budget Office, 2024[27]).
In 2025, the government announced that “Responding to Social Isolation across the Life Course” would be a key policy priority and laid out plans to better connect existing programmes – including those described above to combat lonely deaths, and adolescent and youth social isolation, as well as support programmes for elderly people living alone – into a more co‑ordinated system (National Policy Planning Committee, 2025[42]). At the municipal level, Seoul has also launched a comprehensive anti-loneliness campaign (see Box 4.4). Korea is not alone in devoting increasing policy attention to addressing social isolation and loneliness; even before the COVID‑19 outbreak some OECD countries were implementing national strategies to boost social connectedness, and the enforced social isolation of the pandemic further increased the number of countries tackling this issue. For example, the United Kingdom appointed its first Minister for Loneliness, along with a national policy strategy in 2018. In the same year, the Netherlands launched a national Loneliness policy programme. In more recent years, Japan, Germany, Denmark and Sweden have all launched national strategies to boost connectedness and reduce loneliness, and Spain is undertaking preparatory work for a similar policy initiative (OECD, 2025[38]). In addition, at the international level, the OECD, the European Commission and the World Health Organization, through its Commission on Social Connection, have also recently elevated loneliness and social connectedness as a priority issue (OECD, 2025[38]; World Health Organization, 2025[43]; Mahoney et al., 2024[44]; European Commission, 2022[45]). These governmental efforts are also being supported by increasing international co‑ordination amongst non-governmental actors and researchers, such as through the Global Initiative on Loneliness and Connection (GILC, 2025[46]).
The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) launched the “Seoul, No More Loneliness Initiative”, a comprehensive plan aimed at addressing loneliness and social withdrawal among city residents, in 2024. The initiative aims to provide comprehensive and multi-faceted support to prevent loneliness and social isolation in the city, encompassing a range of interventions:
Knock Knock 24
Knock Knock 24 is a 24/7 support service, connecting callers to trained counsellors and, if needed, refers them to partner organisations for follow-up care such as home visits, emergency support, or long-term counselling. The service also includes an AI-powered mobile messaging counselling option. As part of the initiative, four Seoul “Mind Convenience” Stores will pilot as safe, welcoming spaces where visitors can talk over donated ramen meals and receive peer counseling from those who have experienced social isolation.
Targeted group and universal interventions
The programme encompasses targeted initiatives for different population groups such as the Healthy Dining initiative which supports middle‑aged single‑person households, who often neglect maintaining healthy diets to improve physical and mental health through social dining. The city also aims to establish over 100 Wellness & Longevity Centres by 2030 to promote healthy ageing among senior citizens. In addition the Seoul Metropolitan Psychological Support Center and Seoul Mind Investment Programme for All Citizens (in partnership with private therapy providers) aims to make therapy more accessible to all Seoul residents.
Seoul 365 Challenge Programme
The challenge programme encourages Seoul residents to participants in communal challenges and missions associated with public events and activities, such as Healing Outdoors in Nature, sports activities, the Outdoor Library, and the Care‑Free Jamsu Bridge (Ddoo Ddoo Festival). Participation in challenges earns activity points linked to incentives provided by the city government, which aim to encourage people to interact more with society, and combat feelings of loneliness.
Identifying and reaching socially isolated households
The city will identify at-risk households through the use of administrative data and emergency information, such as gas and electricity usage. Local stores and laundromats frequently visited by these household members will serve as contact points to offer support. Recognising that single‑person households have a greater tendency to order takeaway food through delivery apps, the city is partnering with delivery app services to implement a pop-up window to assess users’ risk of isolation and to offer discount vouchers to encourage individuals to go outside. Various support services, including Knock Knock 24, will be promoted alongside this initiative.
Seoul Connection Prescription
Isolated individuals identified through the different channels will have access to counselling, have and receive a personalised social prescription. The Garden Prescription encourages gardening and mindful outings in forests for socially isolated young people and childless couples. People who choose to isolate themselves or reject support will receive the 15‑Minute Outdoors Prescription, encouraging them to venture outside and regain their daily routines. The Self-Reliance Prescription focusses on supporting the independence of those recovering from isolation and building a care community within the local society to prevent re‑isolation. And, the Life Cycle Prescription provides tailored support for the issue of recurrent isolation tailored to the needs of different age groups.
Spatial Attractiveness Index
Seoul has developed a Spatial Attractiveness Index to measure the connectedness of its different neighbourhoods. Findings from the index will be incorporated into urban planning and city design to ensure the inclusion of sufficient open spaces, allowing citizens to experience nature in urban settings and more easily interact with one another.
A week without loneliness
During the “Week Without Loneliness”, Seoul will host events to encourage spontaneous participation and connection. Prominent public figures and influencers with lived experience will join the campaign to inspire and support residents experiencing loneliness and isolation.
Source: Seoul Metropolitan Government (2024[47]), “Knock Anytime When You Feel Lonely: Seoul Becomes a City Where No One Is Lonely”, https://english.seoul.go.kr/knock-anytime-when-you-feel-lonely-seoul-becomes-a-city-where-no-one-is-lonely/.
Academic pressure and emerging digital risks pose challenges for the mental health and social connectedness of children and adolescents
As across all OECD countries, Korean children and adolescents have experienced declining mental health and social connectedness in recent years, and particularly since the COVID‑19 pandemic. Particular risks in Korea include school-related pressure, emerging digital risks, and rising levels of child and youth suicide. As Chapter 3 described, Korean children and adolescents face high levels of academic pressure, with little free time due to long hours spent in school and private tutoring classes, less opportunity for children to play, and lower reported student life satisfaction than their OECD peers. In 2019, 81% of Korean secondary school students reporting seeing school as a “battlefield of life and death”, and said they were more stressed about school than home life, including experiencing suicidal thoughts related to school grades and university entrance prospects (Kim, 2019[48]). 2024 data from the Ministry of Data and Statistics show worsening trends in this area, with more than 42% of middle and high schoolers (students aged 13‑18) saying they felt stress in daily life over the previous year, up five percentage points (p.p.) compared with 2022. The data also showed that girls reported significantly higher rates of stress and anxiety than boys at this age, with 18% percent of girls showing symptoms of generalised anxiety disorder compared with 10.3% of boys (Ministry of Data and Statistics, 2025[26]).
The academic pressure faced by Korean children and adolescents is in large part a structural issue, driven by an intensely competitive education system and a high cultural value placed on hard work (OECD, 2019[9]). In addition, due to the competitiveness of the academic system and the labour market, Korean parents are often intensively involved in managing their children’s education and academic performance, including “helicopter parenting” (where parents exert excessive control over different dimensions of their children’s lives) (OECD, 2019[9]). High parental expectations have been found to increase the risk of students developing depression and having less perceived control over their lives when the aspirations of children and parents are not aligned (OECD, 2019[9]).
Positive social relationships, and especially intimate friendship relationships, are extremely important in childhood and adolescence (Shulman et al., 1997[49]). Korean students tend to perform relatively well in terms of available measures of school relationships and sense of belonging. According to 2022 data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Korean 15‑year‑old students reported a sense of belonging at school that was as strong as or stronger than the OECD average in 2022, and they showed no deterioration in any of these aspects between 2018 and 2022 (a period in which most countries did see a decline in these indicators due to the COVID‑19 pandemic) (OECD, 2023[50]). Overall, in 2022, only 8.6% of Korean 15‑year‑old students reporting feeling that they felt left out at school (compared with an OECD average of 16.7%) and over three‑quarters said they found it easy making friends at school (77.6%, just above the OECD average of 76.1%) (OECD, 2023[50]). Bullying is also relatively low in Korea according to PISA data: in 2018, only 9% of Korean 15‑year‑old students reported being bullied several times a month, compared with an OECD average of 23% (OECD, 2019[51]). Although a 2019 OECD survey of schoolchildren in the Korean city of Daegu showed higher rates of bullying, with 1 in 4 10‑year‑olds (25%) and almost 1 in 5 15‑year‑olds (19%) experiencing bullying at least a few times in the previous month (OECD, 2021[52]). The experience of bullying has important consequences for mental health: Korean adolescents who experienced physical bullying were 3.05 times more likely to attempt suicide, and victims of (non-physical) cyberbullying were 2.94 times more likely to attempt suicide, than were those who were not bullied at all (Roh et al., 2015[53]).
Cyberbullying, online harassment and broader digital risks are also an important concern for children and adolescents across all OECD countries.8 In 2022, 4 out of ten Korean teenagers experienced cyberbullying, either as perpetrator, victim or both, up from 3 in ten the previous year, and compared with 1 in ten adults according to data from the Korea Communications Commission (Korea Communications Commission, 2023[54]). Finally, peer pressure and negative self-image can also be mental health risk factors for children and adolescents. As Chapter 3 noted, Korean 10‑year‑olds and 12‑year‑olds are much less likely to be satisfied with the way they look than the OECD average, and this is especially the case for girls. Korean studies indicate that girls are more likely to experience negative mental health outcomes from negative feelings about their own appearance (Lee and Jo, 2021[55]).
Labour market and other challenges faced by young adults are associated with negative mental health and social connectedness outcomes
As already addressed in Chapter 3 and this chapter, the transition from education to working life can be challenging for Korean young adults, and the impact of job pressure and labour market precarity can bring negative outcomes for mental health and social connectedness. Long working hours are associated with stress, depression, and suicidal ideation in young Korean employees aged 20 to 35 years (Park et al., 2020[56]). A 2024 Korean Government survey found that almost one‑third (32.2%) of young respondents aged 19‑34 years had experienced burnout in the preceding year, with the most common contributing factors cited including uncertainties over career and life choices (39.1%), overwork (18.4%), doubts about their work (15.6%), and work-life imbalance (11.6%). The same survey also showed that 6.3% of young people required but were unable to receive professional counselling for mental health issues in the previous year, with financial burden being the most commonly cited reason for unmet psychological treatment needs (cited by 38.6% of respondents) (Lee, 2025[57]).
Job insecurity can also add to mental health burden, both for those in high-income regular work, as well as those working in low income and non-regular work (Lim et al., 2022[58]; Baek et al., 2022[59]). Because of the profile of those working in different types of jobs, job insecurity from regular work contracts is most likely to negatively affect the mental health of younger men (Lim et al., 2022[58]), but job insecurity from non-regular contract work is most likely to negatively affect low-income, middle‑aged, and female workers (Baek et al., 2022[59]).9
As discussed in the previous section, youth disengagement from the labour market has been accompanied by a broader detachment from social pursuits and activities for many young adults (the so-called “N-Po Generation”). In 2024, a government survey found that 5.2% of young people aged 19‑34 years were identified as being in extreme social withdrawal (defined as remaining home at all times for reasons not related to pregnancy, childbirth or disability), representing a more than doubling from the 2022 version of the same survey (Lee, 2025[57]). Almost a third of respondents (32.8%) cited difficulty finding work as a reason for their isolation, with other factors including difficulty with interpersonal relationships (11.1%), and the discontinuation of studies (9.7%) (Lee, 2025[57]). Granular studies of the incidence of social isolation by age in Korea show peaks around the age of 20, when transitioning from high school to university or economic activities, and around the age of 25‑27, when moving from university to the workplace, suggesting that unsuccessful transitions to higher education or the workforce increase young adults’ risk of social withdrawal and seclusion (Korea Youth Foundation, 2023[60]). Secluded young adults are more than twice as likely to be depressed as their non-secluded peers, and over three times as likely to have suicidal thoughts (Korea Youth Foundation, 2023[60]). One study has estimated the total social and economic cost of youth social isolation in Korea as at least KRW 7 trillion per year (roughly equivalent to over USD 12 billion annually), in terms of healthcare costs, social security costs related to poverty and unemployment, and economic costs due to economic inactivity, weakening job performance, and low fertility rate (Korea Youth Foundation, 2023[60]).
Older Koreans experience multiple well-being deprivations that increase their risk for low mental health and social connectedness
While many aspects of quality of life tend to decline with age, older Koreans are particularly deprived in a number of well-being aspects, compared with their OECD peers, such as income poverty and perceived health status, as Chapter 3 showed. In terms of mental well-being and social connectedness, elderly Korean women are much more likely to experience pain and stress than their OECD peers, while the male elderly suicide rate is the highest among OECD countries. Older Korean men and women are both much less likely to have someone to count on for support in a time of need than their OECD peers, with social support for older men being particularly low.
The relative recency of Korea’s economic transformation is an important contextual factor for understanding low well-being outcomes for the elderly overall. A person aged 80 years in 2025 would have been born before the start of the country’s exceptional period of economic growth and social development that followed the Korean War in the early 1950s; missing out on many of the subsequent benefits accessible to younger generations in terms of equitable access to high-quality education, social safety net support, and increased labour market opportunities. For example, Korea’s national pension system was only established in 1988, meaning that some Korean elderly people are not automatically entitled to a pension and can only receive one if they prove their offspring are unwilling or unable to provide financial support, which is not always possible (OECD, 2017[61]). Elderly Koreans do not tend to have substantial accumulated savings, and their assets are more likely to be represented by home ownership rather than more liquid forms of financial wealth, meaning that they are dependent on labour income (explaining high levels of old-age employment in Korea) or income support from family members or government sources to maintain minimum living standards (Kim, 2025[62]). Low income and income insecurity are linked with increased likelihood of depression among older Koreans, even for those who own their own home (Park and Seo, 2021[63]).
Elderly people are also more likely to have poor health, and while this is true across OECD countries, self-perceived health quality is particularly low for Korean elderly people compared with OECD peers (see Chapter 3). Poor health and chronic illness significantly increase the risk of depressive symptoms among older adults in Korea, and are a powerful predictor of suicide attempts for this age group (Jang et al., 2023[64]; Shon and Kim, 2024[65]). Other factors linked with low mental health outcomes for older Koreans include living alone, low digital competency, and lack of engagement with community cultural facilities: all factors that increase the risk of social isolation among elderly people (Shon and Kim, 2024[65]). Low income, chronic illness, alcohol addiction, social isolation, disconnection from family members or the neighbourhood, unemployment, living alone, being unmarried or divorced, and living in an urban area have also been associated with a higher risk of lonely death for older Koreans (Kim, 2017[66]). This is in line with evidence from across OECD countries that show that the elderly are most at risk for social isolation, and on average, compared to the general population, unemployed individuals and those in the lowest income quintile are around twice as likely to report feeling lonely (OECD, 2025[38]).
As Chapter 3 showed, social support declines at a much higher rate by age in Korea than in the OECD on average. While social isolation is most pronounced for the elderly, Korean adults of late working age also experience the negative impacts of being disconnected from friends and family. Overall, people in their 50s and 60s accounted for six in 10 lonely deaths in 2023, with men being particularly at risk: men in their 50s and 60s accounted for more than half (54%) of all lonely deaths in Korea in 2023 (The Korea Herald, 2024[67]; Park, 2024[68]). Job loss is one important driver for extreme social isolation for men in this age group, with men deriving an important sense of belonging from employment that leads to a greater risk of social disconnection when it comes to an end (Jung, 2024[69]). Change in marital status and excessive drinking were also associated with lonely deaths: half of those who died lonely deaths were either divorced or separated from their spouses, and almost two‑thirds (63%) were found with over twice the legal driving limit of alcohol in their blood (Park, 2024[68]).
Supporting good mental health and boosting social connectedness in Korea
Preventing extreme negative mental health and social connectedness outcomes, such as suicide and lonely deaths, are important policy priorities in the context of inclusive and sustainable well-being in Korea. Korea’s efforts in these areas could be supported by broader prevention and promotion policies to tackle root causes through the life course, address less severe outcomes before they worsen, and boost positive mental and social well-being for all Koreans. Mental health and social connectedness are separate outcomes, which can require different policy interventions, but are also closely associated: people experiencing poor mental health tend to consistently experience worse social connection outcomes, and there is a large body of evidence that social connectedness can protect and promote mental health (and health more generally) (OECD, 2023[22]). The remainder of this section presents a number of opportunities for supporting good mental health and boosting social connectedness in Korea, covering:
Improving access to preventative mental healthcare support for all Koreans, including children and adolescents
Reducing social stigma around mental health and loneliness;
Strengthening cross-government co‑ordination to combat loneliness and boost social connections;
Strengthening school-based interventions to promote social and emotional skills and digital literacy;
Integrating measures to promote mental health and social connectedness for job seekers and workers;
Strengthening integrated efforts to boost mental health and social connectedness of older people; and,
Strengthening data quality and availability on mental health and social connectedness.
Improving access to preventative mental healthcare support, including for children and adolescents
Despite recent efforts to improve mental healthcare prevention and promotion, Korea’s mental healthcare system remains an outlier among OECD countries in its emphasis on inpatient hospitalisation for psychiatric care, and the relative lack of accessible, affordable outpatient mental healthcare resources (OECD, 2021[29]). Alongside suicide prevention measures, early detection of mental ill-health symptoms (including mild-to-moderate depression and anxiety), and enabling access to mental healthcare support and resources (including outpatient resources) are core aspects of effective mental health prevention and promotion (OECD, 2025[70]). Such efforts are important for boosting well-being outcomes across the population, but adapted measures to address the needs and circumstances of children and adolescents are particularly important, given the rising trend of negative mental health and social connectedness outcomes for this age group, as well as the fact that mental health issues affecting individuals through the life course often emerge at a young age (OECD, 2025[70]). Box 4.5 describes some good practice examples related to improving access and affordability to preventative mental healthcare resources, including for children and adolescents.
Improving access to mental healthcare support: The Belgian mental health reform, Norway’s Prompt Mental Healthcare teleconsultation programme, Australia’s headspace centres and Germany’s iFight Depression tool (iFD)
In 2009, Belgium instated a comprehensive reform of the mental healthcare system to improve access to mental healthcare, and to encourage a more integrated and intersectional approach to its provision. The reformed Belgian model aligns with an international vision of enabling more patient-centred and personalised care in mental health, including through patient outreach approaches that aim to allow patients to receive individualised and timely care within their personal and social surroundings. Principles underpinning the reform include the prioritisation of outpatient care over inpatient care (including measures to reduce the length of hospital stays and improve rehabilitative care to support the reintegration of patients within society) and supporting a more joined-up approach to mental healthcare by supporting co‑operation across institutions and professionals both within the medical sector, and beyond. The creation of multidisciplinary mental health networks offering rapid and free access to psychologists (including 11 networks for people under 24) have increased access to psychological support for people of all ages including children. Evaluation evidence has shown that for those individuals who got access to a psychologist through the network, the prevalence of mental health disorders has decreased by 10% on average, six months after their enrolment (OECD, 2025[70]). The OECD has recognised the Belgian Mental Health Reform as an example of international best practice in mental health prevention and promotion. An OECD analysis of the programme’s transferability to other OECD countries has placed Korea in the groups of countries with favourable population characteristics, sector-specific capacities, political support and economic conditions to support the successful implementation of a similar model (OECD, 2025[70]).
In Norway, the Prompt Mental Health Care (PMHC) programme has been established to provide low-threshold, free‑of-charge, and timely access to mental health care based on the provision of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), divided into low-intensity treatment (teaching-based courses and guided self-help) and high-intensity treatment options (individual psychotherapy). The programme encompasses the use of teleconsultations to facilitate access for individuals with mild to moderate symptoms and is accessible for adolescents from age 16. The OECD has identified PHMC as an example of international best practice in improving access to mental health care, with high potential for transferability in many countries, including Korea, having favourable population, sector-specific, political and economic arrangements to support its implementation (OECD, 2025[70]).
Australia’s headspace centres are based on an early intervention and prevention model, designed to assist young people managing mild to moderate, high prevalence mental health conditions. Every year, headspace services support around 100 000 young people in Australia – often reaching young people with non-diagnosed mental illnesses. Australia first established its headspace centres in 2007, and as of 2023 there were 154 services across Australia, comprising the largest national network of youth mental health services world-wide. Similar service approaches in youth mental health care are now being implemented in many other countries, including Ireland, Canada, Denmark, Israel, the United Kingdom, and parts of the United States. A recent evaluation, based on survey responses from users of the services from mid-2019 to mid-2020 assessed the programme’s impacts on three core areas of mental health: psychological distress, psychosocial functioning, and quality of life for young people accessing headspace. More than 70% of the 50 000 users covered by the study experienced a significant improvement on at least one of these measures during the period (OECD, 2024[18]).
The iFightDepression® (iFD) Tool is a web-based intervention for people with mild-to-moderate depression, based on the principles of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). It is designed for individuals aged 15 and older with mild-to-moderate depression, comprising a version for adults aged 25 and above and another specifically for young adults aged 15 to 24. It has been integrated into routine care in Germany in 2016, following an EU-funded development process beginning in 2011. Access to the iFD Tool is enabled by a general practitioner (GP) or a mental health professional who have been trained in the programme. Use of the tool is self-managed by the user, however the healthcare professional remains in contact with them throughout the duration of its use, providing guidance and support as needed. The iFD Tool is free‑of-charge for users and is intended to complement therapy, rather than replacing it. Evaluations of the tool show that users experienced reduced depressive symptoms by 40% more than an active control group after six weeks, while also improving quality of life by 89% after six weeks and 56% after three months (OECD, 2025[70]). The OECD has identified the iFD Tool as an example of international best practice in mental health prevention and promotion, and analysis of the ease of transferability of the iFD Tool places Korea among the group of countries with necessary population, sector-specific, economic and political arrangements in place to facilitate a successful implementation of a locally-adapted version of the tool (OECD, 2025[70]).
Social isolation prevention and support: Join Us, the Netherlands
Join Us is a preventive programme for reducing loneliness among young people targeted at adolescents and young adults from age 12‑30, with a particular focus on those experiencing chronic loneliness. It is currently implemented in 86 Dutch municipalities. The programme gathers groups of up to 15 young people twice a month for fun social activities, peer learning, and a focus on personal leadership. Each participant identifies one or more personal social challenges related to the root cause of their loneliness. Training is provided to give local youth professionals the skills to implement the programme effectively. A participant leaves the programme when they are socially competent enough to maintain a suitable network that meets their needs, both in the short and long-term (Join Us, 2025[71]).
Suicide prevention: SUPRA in Austria and VigilanS in France
Suicide Prevention Austria (SUPRA) is a national strategy for suicide prevention. Alongside population-level interventions (including training frontline actors to listen to people at risk of suicide and provide essential support, safeguarding hotspots for suicide attempts, and reducing access to means of suicide),1 SUPRA also includes actions on crisis management and suicide prevention in school-based programmes related to addiction and violence. SUPRA also aims to inform policymakers nationwide about these actions targeting children and young people to raise awareness on the importance of addressing the needs of younger age groups. The OECD has identified the SUPRA approach as an example of international best practice in mental health prevention and promotion, and analysis of its transferability to other OECD countries places Korea in a group of countries with necessary population, sector-specific, political, and economic conditions in place to support its implementation (OECD, 2025[70]).
VigilanS is a programme in France aimed at preventing the repetition of suicide attempts through the maintenance of contact with patients after they are discharged from hospital following a suicide attempt. The programme has been shown to reduce repetition of suicide attempts by 24% within one year. VigilanS Ado, a version specifically for children and adolescents, offers tailored support through earlier phone calls after discharge and includes text messaging as an additional communication tool. The OECD has identified the VigilanS model as an example of international best practice in mental health prevention and promotion, and analysis of its transferability to other OECD countries places Korea in a group of countries with supportive political and economic arrangements, but which may benefit from adjustments in the healthcare infrastructure (such as by increasing the number of trained psychologists) to enable effective implementation (OECD, 2025[70]).
1. Similar measures are included in Korea’s Suicide Prevention approach, Park (2025[34]), “Suicide Rates and Countermeasures in South Korea Suicide Rates and Countermeasures in South Korea: Emphasis on Recent Legislative Reforms Focused on Young Adults”, https://jglobal.jst.go.jp/en/detail?JGLOBAL_ID=202502241360020881.
Reducing social stigma and discrimination around mental health and loneliness
Stigma surrounding mental health is relatively high in Korea. According to a 2019 global survey conducted by Ipsos on attitudes to mental health in 29 countries, only 28% of Koreans agreed that seeing a mental health professional was a sign of strength (compared with an average of 63% across the 19 OECD countries included in the survey) and 42% of Koreans agreed that anyone with a history of mental illness should be excluded from public office (compared with an OECD 19 average of 25%) (OECD, 2021[23]). One 2025 survey of 1 000 Korean adults aged 18 years and above found that 7 in 10 respondents (71.5%) said they would avoid seeking psychiatric care or medication in the case of deteriorating mental health, a similar proportion (69.4%) feared losing friends if diagnosed with a mental illness, and almost 9 in 10 respondents (88.7%) believed that having a mental health diagnosis could hurt their job prospects (Kang, Jeong and Park, 2025[72]).
The Korean Government has already taken steps to combat mental health-related stigma through a nationwide anti-stigma campaign conducted in collaboration with universities and mental health advocacy groups (Park, 2023[73]), and the development of media guidelines to encourage responsible reporting on mental illness and to emphasise the importance of proper treatment and care (Jo et al., 2024[74]). The Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare also collaborated with the World Bank on research into international approaches for reducing mental health-related stigma and discrimination, with a report published in 2024 (World Bank, 2024[75]). The report recommended that stigma and discrimination programmes be long-term, involve people with a full range of different mental health conditions, prioritise approaches based on in-person or virtual social contact between those with and without lived experience of mental ill-health, and specify target audiences and outcomes at the outset (World Bank, 2024[75]). The need to be specific about target audiences is important, because stigma and discrimination is not experienced in the same way across a population. For example, an analysis of social media data in 2019 indicated that fear of structural discrimination (such as through negative employment or insurance outcomes) was the most important barrier preventing Korean teenagers, job seekers, and mothers with children from seeking psychiatric help when needed, whereas public prejudice was the greatest barrier for older people (Seo et al., 2022[76]). OECD analysis has also found that peer-to-peer support services and training programmes for teachers and parents can be impactful in reducing stigma and lowering the barrier for young people to seek help (OECD, 2025[77]). Box 4.6 gives relevant examples from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and worldwide.
Stigma is also an important factor in the prevalence of loneliness, both because loneliness itself can carry shame and stigma, as well as because groups who experience higher levels of societal stigma, such as people with disabilities, LGBT+ people, or people from ethnic or racial minorities are also more likely to experience social disconnection and loneliness than their non-stigmatised peers within countries (World Health Organization, 2025[43]). Given the relative recency of policy research on social connectedness, less evidence is available on what works, although insights from mental health stigma reduction campaigns and programmes are also relevant for reducing stigma related to loneliness and social isolation (World Health Organization, 2025[43]).
Time to change, England (United Kingdom)
Time to Change (TTC) was the world’s longest-running national programme for addressing mental health stigma and discrimination, taking place in England from 2007 to 2021. The programme was a cross-sectoral partnership led by mental health NGOs Mind and Rethink Mental Illness, with the involvement of a lived-experience‑led NGO in the development phase; it received GBP 4‑5 million per year through funding from the government-franchised National Lottery scheme as well as the UK Health and Education Ministries, supplemented by funding from various other philanthropic partners and corporate sponsors. Audience‑insight research and impact assessment of campaigns and programmes were conducted under commission by market research companies (World Bank, 2024[75]). Target audiences of particular importance for mental health stigma and discrimination reduction in England were identified through preliminary research and then refined throughout the duration of the programme. These included: adults aged 24‑44 (classed as “subconscious stigmatisers”) for the initial stage of the programme in 2007-2011; children and adolescents aged 11‑16 and their parents, African and Caribbean adults aged 24‑44 and South Asian adults in the second phase in 2011‑202; and the final phase running from 2016-2021 focussed specifically on men aged 24‑44 years from lower socio‑economic demographics (World Bank, 2024[75]).
The programme encompassed multiple aspects, including a national social marketing campaign tailored to the target audiences of interest. In addition, a whole‑school approach to stigma and discrimination reduction was implemented in 2 000 secondary schools and throughout a network of head teachers; over 7 000 adults were trained as “champions” to develop community support groups for the campaign; local social contact events were organised across all regions of England by regional co‑ordinators and trained champions; over 3 000 employers were supported to develop mental health pledges and action plans; key messages from the programme were integrated in 80 TV and radio drama scripts; two pilot training programmes to support health staff, police and primary care professionals were implemented (similar to the Korean Government’s expansive “gatekeeper” training programme); and celebrity spokespeople were engaged to further promote the programme’s messages. A Lived Experience Advisory Panel provided guidance at all levels of the programme encompassing governance, programme management, project delivery, campaign advisory group, and evaluation (World Bank, 2024[75]).
Long-term trend analysis indicated that the introduction of the campaign led to statistically significant and moderate positive improvements in in public attitudes and behaviour regarding mental health (beyond what could have been expected without the campaign), especially regarding the reduction of negative attitudes associated with prejudice and exclusion (Evans-Lacko et al., 2014[78]). Sixty one per cent of trained champions in 2018 felt increased confidence to challenge stigma and discrimination (World Bank, 2024[75]), and research found a positive association between people’s awareness of the campaign and their likelihood to disclose mental health concerns to family or friends, and to seek help (Henderson et al., 2017[79]).
@Ease Walk-in Centres, the Netherlands
@Ease walk-in centres provide places where young people who experience mental distress can go to seek help and talk with a young adult peer. Voluntary young adult peers, including volunteers with lived experience of mental ill-health, are trained in active listening, solution-focussed strategies and motivational interviewing, and are supervised by a healthcare professional on site. Fifteen @ease centres have been established in 12 municipalities in the Netherlands (OECD, 2025[77]; 2025[70]). OECD research has identified the @Ease model as a best practice in mental health promotion and prevention, although analysis of the transferability of the @Ease model to the other OECD country contexts places Korea among the group of countries that may need to establish further population, sector-specific, or economic arrangements to support its implementation (such as taking measures to increase the number of psychologists able to supervise such an approach to talk therapy provision) (OECD, 2025[70]).
Mental Health First Aid (MHFA), Worldwide
MHFA is a multi-country training programme that teaches front-line actors, including parents, teachers, and social workers, how to recognise, understand and help someone experiencing mental distress or a crisis. Since being first established in Australia, in 2001, as of 2021 there were licensed providers of mental health first aid in 27 countries that have together trained more than 3 million people worldwide. While MHFA can be taken by anyone and is not limited to schools, many OECD countries have set targets to expand training in schools through these programmes. For example, in the United Kingdom, in 2017, the government announced a plan to make mental health first aid training available in all secondary schools by 2020. As of March 2020, over 2 500 schools had been reached through this plan. MHFA was found to increase mental health literacy, helping-behaviour and confidence in helping people with mental health problems (OECD, 2021[23]). The OECD has also identified the Mental Health First Aid approach as a best practice in mental health prevention and promotion, and analysis of the transferability of the MHFA approach to other OECD country contexts places Korea in a group of countries that have the necessary political arrangements to support the implementation (through a co‑ordinated cross-government mental health framework) but may need to take measures to strengthen broader contextual support factors (such as encouraging levels of volunteering) (OECD, 2025[70]).
Strengthening cross-government co‑ordination to combat loneliness and boost social connections
In 2025, the Korean Government announced a plan for “Responding to Social Isolation across the Life Course”, aiming to support more effective co‑ordination across existing programmes targeting social isolation for adolescents, youth, and the elderly, and preventing lonely deaths (National Policy Planning Committee, 2025[42]). OECD work shows that a number of factors can help further strengthen the effectiveness of co‑ordinated government action for boosting social connectedness, including integrating explicit targets in cross-government and local-level strategies and creating long-term initiatives and institutional structures with dedicated funding and convening power, such as Ministerial roles or central government taskforces (OECD, 2023[22]). Box 4.7 gives an example from Japan, where a Ministerial position and portfolio has been created to spearhead a long-term whole of government anti-loneliness strategy.
In February 2021, the Japanese Government created the position of Minister in charge of Measures for Loneliness and Isolation. The decision was prompted by increased policy and public attention to these issues during the COVID‑19 pandemic but also aimed to address rising concerns over previous years following an increase in the elderly population living alone, rising youth loneliness, and a general perception of weakening family, community, workplace bonds due to social change. Japanese Government action was further deepened following the promulgation of the Act on the Advancement of Measures to Address Loneliness and Isolation in May 2024, and the subsequent launch of the Priority Plan to Facilitate the Promotion of the Policies Regarding Measures to Address Loneliness and Isolation (henceforth, the “Priority Plan”) in June 2024. The Priority Plan encompasses cross-government action to be taken at the local and national level and includes collaboration with civil society and private sector actors, as it recognises that comprehensive action to tackle these issues cannot be undertaken by the government alone. The measures are co‑ordinated by the government Cabinet Office under the guidance of the minister in charge of Measures for Loneliness and Isolation.
The overarching aims of the plan are to foster “a society where not a single person suffering from loneliness and isolation is left behind” and “a society where individuals support and connect with each other”. The Plan’s approach is underpinned by an emphasis on creating an environment in which it is easy for people to ask for and access support, encouraging cross-government co‑ordination to improve synergies for boosting social connectedness while pursuing other objectives, and promoting public-private collaboration. Specific actions in the plan include the following:
Improving situational monitoring and gathering evidence on what works through regular national surveys of population loneliness and social isolation, and systematic evaluation of implemented programmes to inform evidence‑based design and improve the effectiveness of interventions.
Supporting cross government and cross-sectoral co‑ordination through targeted support for local government authorities; the establishment of local Public-Private Co‑ordination Platforms for Loneliness and Isolation Measures to provide structure for collaboration between government, private and civil society actors; the incorporation of loneliness and isolation perspectives in policy development of ministries and agencies across government; and the expansion of social prescribing methods in healthcare, social welfare, education, and nursing care contexts.
Taking a long-term, person-focussed, and community-based approach to strengthen ease of access for support including the development of a public information platform, a 24‑hour telephone and message support system, and a one‑stop consultation system that connects people seeking help with locally-based and tailored support options; promoting the maintenance and creation of community spaces for diverse forms of social interaction such as parks, museums, and libraries; and establishing measures to support connectedness in the working environment, including training and capacity-building for human resource staff on loneliness and isolation.
Raising public awareness and reducing shame around asking for help through various initiatives including making May every year “Loneliness and Isolation Prevention Month” with associated awareness-raising events and campaigns; and training people to become “Tsunagari”1 supporters, enabling them to act as community ambassadors, providing information and support at the local level.
1. Tsunagari is a Japanese concept referring to links, ties, connections, relationships.
Source: Japan Government Cabinet Office (2024[80]), Priority Plan to Facilitate the Promotion of the Policies Regarding Measures to Address Loneliness and Isolation, https://www.cao.go.jp/kodoku_koritsu/index-e.html.
As widespread policy efforts to tackle social isolation and loneliness are relatively recent, there is less established evidence available on what works. To date, the majority of the limited, but growing, evidence on interventions aimed at boosting social connectedness has focussed on interventions targeting (disconnected or lonely) individuals with the aim of improving their social skills and awareness, either though self-guided training or inter-personal interventions led by healthcare professionals (OECD, 2025[38]). However, improving social skills is only one of the pathways to reducing loneliness and social isolation (Masi et al., 2011[81]). Among countries that are actively engaged in combatting loneliness and social isolation, there is a growing recognition of the importance of community- or population-level interventions to address the structural causes of disconnection and increase opportunities for connection (World Health Organization, 2025[43]; OECD, 2025[38]).
Examples of community-based approaches that are being increasingly employed internationally include: integrating social connections in existing service structures, for example, through social prescribing (a practice in which health professionals connect patients to non-health-related support provided by community organisations); supporting community programmes, including recreational and art activities and volunteering; and prioritising investment in social infrastructure such as public, civic and green spaces that create inclusive opportunities for social contact and improve a sense of belonging (see Box 4.8). In Korea, the Seoul municipal government initiative described in Box 4.4 incorporates many of these approaches within a comprehensive programme that combines community-based and individual-focussed interventions. Evidence on the impact of the programme could provide relevant insights for successful interventions to be potentially scaled up to national level. Overall, at the international level, there is a need to strengthen the evidence base on effective and scalable interventions for improving social connectedness for different population groups (OECD, 2025[38]; 2023[22]).
Recent OECD research has taken a deeper look at the role of social infrastructure in fostering social connectedness. Social infrastructure encompasses the spaces and organisations that facilitate social interaction, helping to build social capital and a sense of belonging. This includes public institutions such as libraries, schools, playgrounds, parks, and sidewalks; community organisations like places of worship and civic associations; and commercial venues such as cafés, barbershops, and bookstores. The availability, accessibility, and welcoming nature of these (semi-)public spaces are key to forming, maintaining, and broadening social networks, as well as supporting social mobility.
In Korea, specific efforts have been made to increase the number of libraries, for example (increasing from 828 in 2012 to 1 134 in 2019), which provide multiple community services and connection opportunities including reading programmes for young children, cultural programmes and career training for young adults, and initiatives related to employment (job search, how to start a business) for adults, and in some cases acting as climate shelters during abnormal weather conditions such as heat waves, cold snaps, heavy rain and flooding.
The use of social infrastructure can yield wider benefits for well-being beyond fostering social connection and cohesion. For example, visiting public parks not only encourages social interaction but also promotes physical activity and time spent in nature, both of which contribute to improved physical and mental health. Regular engagement with social infrastructure is linked to long-term health outcomes, including increased longevity, partly due to the role of social interaction.
Evidence from Japan illustrates this effect: in communities that had invested more in senior community centres – flexible spaces serving as libraries, cafés, or general meeting areas for older adults with limited social contact – older residents reported having more friends, greater self-efficacy (i.e. belief in their ability to influence their environment), and a stronger sense of belonging. Following the 2011 earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear accident, data show that attendance at these centres was associated with higher perceived neighbourhood recovery, highlighting the role of social infrastructure in building community resilience.
Source: OECD (2025[38]), Social Connections and Loneliness in OECD Countries, https://doi.org/10.1787/6df2d6a0-en.
Strengthening school-based interventions to promote social and emotional skills and digital literacy
Academic pressure is likely to remain a highly present factor for Korean students without structural shifts to address the competitive nature of the education system and job market.10 However, opportunities exist to strengthen educational interventions to support children and adolescents’ psychological resilience and relationship-building skills through social and emotional learning (SEL) programmes in schools.11 SEL has been an established facet of Korean education since 2010 and has been enshrined in law since 2015 through the Character Education Promotion Act, which focusses on the development of social and emotional skills such as honesty, responsibility, respect, consideration and co‑operation. State and local authorities are responsible for formulating and promoting long-term policies to realise the objectives of this Act (OECD, 2021[52]). The purpose of the Act and associated policies is to promote the development of sound and positive character among Korean students, so that they can achieve academic success, become productive citizens, and learn to live harmoniously with others and within a broader community (Lee and Bong, 2017[82]). Prior to 2025, the framework focussed primarily on the development of moral behaviour and ethics rather than building individual resilience and positive mental health outcomes. However, from 2025, social and emotional learning programmes have been universally introduced in schools that also emphasise emotional regulation and relationship-building skills, with the aim of promoting positive (and preventing negative) mental health and social connectedness outcomes for students (Ministry of Education, 2025[83]). Korean schools are also mandated by law (through the Act on Prevention of and Countermeasures for School Violence) to include one session per semester on the social and emotional skills necessary to reduce school violence and bullying. Box 4.9 describes some international good practice examples of school-based interventions to promote good mental health and social relationships for children and adolescents that could complement existing efforts.
Social and emotional learning for children’s mental well-being: Zippy’s friends, various countries
Zippy’s Friends is a social and emotional learning programme aimed at 5‑7 year‑olds1 intended to enhance coping skills, social skills, and emotional literacy, while also improving classroom climate and helping to reduce bullying. Through interactive sessions that include storytelling, discussion, games, role‑play, and drawing, children learn to develop their own positive strategies for handling everyday challenges. The programme encompasses six modules covering a different theme: Feelings, Communication, Friendship, Conflict, Change and Loss, and Moving Forward. Implementation of Zippy’s Friends has been found to reduce oppositional behaviour by 9% and social isolation by 15%, among many other beneficial outcomes for mental and social well-being (OECD, 2025[77]). The OECD has identified Zippy’s Friends as a best practice for mental health promotion and prevention, and analysis of its transferability to different OECD contexts places Korea in a group of countries which have necessary political and economic arrangements in place, but may need to consider school conditions (such as class size or buy-in from teachers) to support effective implementation (OECD, 2025[70]).2
Incorporating social and emotional learning in educational curriculums: The Happiness Curriculum, India
In Delhi, India, a “Happiness Curriculum” has been introduced in over 1 000 government schools, incorporating a daily 45‑minute class for over 800 000 students from nursery to grade 8. The programme includes a mindfulness practice to support children to be mindful of their own emotions, thoughts, and actions to reduce stress and improve self-awareness. It also supports children to express their emotions, as well as using real-life scenarios of ordinary people to develop stories and activities that focus on relationships, responsibilities towards others, finding a purpose in life, empathy, and gratitude. Evaluations of the programme showed an improvement of the social and emotional well-being of students taking part (OECD, 2024[84]).
Promoting positive mental health for adolescents: Youth Aware of Mental Health, various European countries
Youth Aware of Mental Health, also known as YAM, is a school-based programme for adolescents aged 13 to 17, in which they learn about and explore the topic of mental health through role‑play and student-led discussions. YAM has been conducted with more than 170 000 teenagers in 17 countries, and more than 1 600 people have been trained as YAM Instructors worldwide. An EU-wide Randomised Controlled Trial in which more than 11 000 youth participated (Saving and Empowering Young Lives in Europe (SEYLE)) found YAM effective in reducing new cases of suicide attempts and severe suicidal ideation by approximately 50%, and new cases of depression were reduced by approximately 30% in the youth participating in YAM (OECD, 2024[85]; McGillivray et al., 2020[86]).
Using team sports to promote prosocial behaviour: Icehearts, Finland
Icehearts is an evidence‑based model to support children with educational special needs or other vulnerabilities through the combination of long-term individual counselling and support, and physical exercise and social engagement through team sports. It was developed in Finland and efforts are currently underway to apply the approach in other European countries. Children who require special support and who have been recognised as being at risk of social exclusion early on are selected for a team. They are selected in co‑operation with pre‑school, school and social service professionals. The child’s caregivers ultimately decide if the child will participate in the team activities and accept the support offered. Each Icehearts team is led by a mentor who supports the selected children at school, after school and at home for 12 years. The Icehearts methodology has been found to improve prosocial behaviour amongst 49% of participants and has reduced the number of young people out of education, training or employment by 50% (OECD, 2025[77]). The OECD has identified the Icehearts model as a best practice in mental health promotion and prevention, and analysis of its transferability potential to other OECD countries places Korea in a group of countries with specific, political and economic arrangements in place to readily transfer Icehearts to their local context (OECD, 2025[70]).
Reducing bullying and cyberbullying: KiVa, Finland and other countries
KiVa (short for Kiusaamista Vastaan, meaning “against bullying” in Finnish) is a comprehensive anti-bullying programme developed in Finland and widely adopted across the country’s comprehensive schools (Iceharts Europe, 2025[87]). Created by the University of Turku and funded by the Finnish Ministry of Education, KiVa is a whole‑school initiative designed to integrate seamlessly with existing anti-bullying strategies. The programme includes a range of components. Classroom lessons raise awareness about bullying, emotional intelligence, and respect. These lessons also explore the role of peer groups in either sustaining or stopping bullying and include group activities that encourage students to brainstorm and practice how they can support victims. A digital learning element enhances engagement, with students playing anti-bullying computer games between lessons to reinforce key concepts. KiVa teams, typically made up of three staff members such as teachers or other school personnel, work closely with classroom teachers to respond to cases of bullying. These teams meet with both the victim and the perpetrator, while teachers facilitate supportive conversations with classmates to promote peer support for those affected. KiVa has demonstrated strong positive outcomes, including reductions in bullying and victimisation, as well as improvements in academic motivation and performance. Notably, the programme has also been effective in reducing cyberbullying and cybervictimisation, though its impact in this area tends to be stronger among younger students and as children approach adolescence, the programme’s effects on cyberbullying become less significant. KiVa has been adapted for application in Italy and the Netherlands, and evaluations in those countries also confirm the programme’s effectiveness in reducing both traditional and online bullying (OECD, 2025[77]).
1. In some countries, a similar programme for 7‑to‑9‑year‑old children has also been applied, called Apple’s friends (Partnership for Children, 2025[88]).
2. The Zippy’s Friends approach has been applied at the local level within Korea previously in Gwangju, but not at the national level (Partnership for Children, 2025[88]).
School-based interventions can also play a role in supporting children and families to manage digital risks to well-being. Digital devices and platforms have fundamentally altered the way people behave and interact, bringing new opportunities for the way children and adolescents learn, express themselves creatively, and connect with each other, as well as potential risks such as reduced face‑to-face interactions, exposure to harmful content and behaviours, online abuse, and negative impacts on sleep, physical activity, and overall physical and mental health (OECD, 2025[89]). There are still many uncertainties about the net impact on child and adolescent mental health and social connectedness, with most existing research being correlational rather than causal, and drivers and impacts often varying depending on individual characteristics such as age and gender, as well as type and quantity of digital media engagement (OECD, 2025[89]). While there is no consensus around the threshold for problematic digital usage, when children struggle to manage their time online it can lead to excessive use or addiction-like behaviours, which can increase the risk of depression, anxiety, loneliness, academic struggles, body image concerns, and poor sleep, with girls often being more affected (OECD, 2025[89]). According to PISA 2022 data, while the amount of time Korean 15‑year‑olds spend on digital devices for leisure on weekdays is on par with the OECD average (1.5 hours), at the weekends this increases to 4.4 hours, half an hour above the OECD average of 3.9 hours (OECD, 2023[50]). Korea has an established model for providing outpatient support through Addiction Management Centres that address different forms of addiction (alcohol, drugs, gambling) including internet addiction (OECD, 2020[5]). The government has also funded residential youth “digital detox” programmes since 2014 for adolescents experiencing internet or smartphone addiction (Siemiatycki, 2025[90]).
Recent OECD research has highlighted a number of recommendations for countries to implement whole‑of-government and whole‑of-society approaches to promote child well-being in a digital age across four pillars: ensuring effective regulatory and technology development frameworks that prioritise child safety; improving digital literacy and skills among children; providing guidance for parents and caregivers to help them navigate the benefits and risks of children’s digital engagement; and incorporating children’s perspectives and experiences into policy design to ensure their needs are accurately understood and that support measures are effectively implemented (OECD, 2025[89]). In addition, continued research and evaluation are necessary to strengthen the evidence base on the links between digital engagement and mental health and social connectedness outcomes for children and adolescents. Box 4.10 presents an international good practice example from Ireland of a comprehensive school- and family-based approach to child digital well-being encompassing digital literacy, parental guidance, and inclusive policy design. Box 4.21 later in the chapter will describe some examples of regulatory and technological development frameworks for online safety in the context of gender-based violence.
Ireland’s Digital Strategy for Schools to 2027 was launched in April 2022 to set out a national framework to support embedding digital technologies across all levels of schooling, including:
Promoting digital literacy for students. The strategy strongly prioritises digital literacy, defined to include digital citizenship, misinformation awareness, privacy, and online safety. A Digital Media Literacy short course was developed as part of the strategy, teaching students to discriminate between sources, think critically about online content, and engage safely in digital environments.
Parental guidance on good digital practice. The Department of Education introduced the “Keeping Childhood Smartphone Free” policy, which serves as a guide for parents and parents’ associations to discuss Internet safety and smartphone access for primary school children with their school community. Through Webwise, the national Internet Safety Awareness Centre, parents are also provided with a dedicated hub offering practical advice on online safety, cyberbullying, social media norms, and ethical usage. Webwise works also through Education Support Centres to run awareness programmes aimed at empowering parents to support their children’s digital literacy journey effectively.
Incorporating the input of children and adolescents into policy design. A wide‑ranging consultation process was undertaken in developing the strategy, explicitly engaging students at both primary and post‑primary levels, alongside parents, teachers, principals, and stakeholders across the education ecosystem. Reports from focus groups and student questionnaires helped shape the strategy’s priorities and implementation planning. Webwise also involves a Youth Advisory Panel in developing youth‑oriented resources, ensuring that young people’s perspectives directly inform materials addressing disinformation, well‑being, online ethics, and digital citizenship.
A number of other countries have also implemented similar school-based digital strategies including Austria’s Acht-Punkte‑Plan (Eight-Point-Plan/Strategy for a Digital School), Italy’s National Plan for Digital Education (PNSD), the Slovenian Digital Education Action Plan 2027 and Spain’s National Plan for Digital Skills.
Sources: OECD (2025[89]) How’s Life for Children in the Digital Age?, https://doi.org/10.1787/0854b900-en; Ireland Department of Education and Youth (2022[91]), Digital Strategy for Schools to 2027, https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-education/publications/digital-strategy-for-schools-to-2027/.
Integrating measures to promote mental health and social connectedness for job seekers and workers
People with mental health conditions have much lower rates of employment, higher rates of unemployment, lower wages and incomes, and higher rates of dependence on all types of working-age benefits (OECD, 2021[23]). Estimates of the total cost of mental health are as high as 4% of GDP across OECD countries when accounting for lowered productivity, higher work absences, and increased spending on social services (OECD, 2021[29]). Loneliness is also associated with poorer performance and productivity at work, a higher risk of absenteeism, and unemployment while supportive workplace relationships increase job satisfaction and creativity (OECD, 2025[38]).
OECD countries have begun to develop integrated policy approaches that recognise the interlinkages between mental health and work outcomes, and the OECD Recommendation on Integrated Mental Health, Skills and Work Policy highlights the importance of joint health, social, education and employment interventions as a key pillar of effective whole‑of-government integrated mental health strategies (OECD, 2021[23]). Loneliness and social isolation were not explicitly recognised in the OECD Recommendation, but subsequent policy guidance notes the importance of loneliness as an emerging policy issue (particularly following the COVID‑19 pandemic) to be considered in integrated approaches to work, skills and mental health (OECD, 2021[23]; 2015[92]; 2015[93]). The Recommendation highlights the importance of prevention measures such as training frontline actors such as teachers, social workers and other relevant non-experts to recognise the early signs of mental ill-health and suicide risk to facilitate access to information and resources for those in need. Korea has long prioritised such frontline, or gatekeeper, training in its suicide prevention efforts.12 Box 4.11 highlights some cross-cutting issues to support successful integrated government policy approaches for promoting good mental health and social connections.
Across OECD countries, poor mental health tends to be associated with worse outcomes in most other aspects of well-being. For example, people at risk of mental distress are nearly twice as likely to be at the bottom of the income distribution, to be unemployed, or to be dissatisfied with the safety and availability of green spaces where they live. They are also more than twice as likely be dissatisfied with their use of time and to report low trust in other people. On the other hand, financial security, good physical health, and living in a safe and clean environment are associated with good emotional and psychological well-being. Social connectedness is closely linked with mental health, as well as physical health, economic, educational, and employment outcomes.
These strong interlinkages mean that successful and people‑centred strategies to promote good population mental health need to acknowledge that good mental health is shaped by (and shapes in turn) multiple factors of individual, family and community well-being. The recognition that these strategies hence need to involve a range of sectors across all of government is nothing new. Indeed, calls for comprehensive “health in all policies” approaches, which systematically integrate (mental) health considerations into policies across sectors, have been renewed at both national and international levels in recent years. Yet in practice, coalition-building with other sectors remains limited and often not implemented at scale. Some of the most commonly-cited difficulties include the fact that inter-departmental task forces dealing with mental health are often time limited and lack decision making power; furthermore, aspects such as accountability or plans for monitoring and evaluation of partnerships are often absent from high-level strategy documents, and resource constraints remain a challenge.
There are several options for “win-win” policies that can jointly improve both mental health and other policy goals. An OECD report, How to Make Societies Thrive? Co‑ordinating Approaches to Promote Well-being and Mental Health (2023[22]) presents numerous examples that illustrate these co-benefits across sectors, many of which are exemplified in the case studies included in this section, such as integrating mental health service provision into job-seeking services, encouraging employers to prioritise mental health at work, school-based interventions and the incorporation of social and emotional learning in curricula, the expansion of social prescribing programmes, the development of adequate community social infrastructure, positive population ageing, and prioritising social connectedness as an explicit policy target.
OECD research on integrated mental health promotion has found that achieving such cross-sectoral “win-win” policies effectively requires appropriate institutional support such as adequate funding, and incentives and working arrangements that enable all relevant stakeholders across government and society to contribute. It also highlights the importance of clearly defined objectives and a shared action blueprint setting out how different actors (including non-governmental actors) can contribute. In addition, as change can take time, integrated approaches benefit from longer-term commitments rather than short-term projects, that integrate evaluation evidence and insights from successful interventions on an ongoing basis to improve impact and effectiveness over time.
Source: OECD (2023[22]), How to Make Societies Thrive? Co‑ordinating Approaches to Promote Well-being and Mental Health, https://doi.org/10.1787/fc6b9844-en.
The value of integrating mental health and social connectedness promotion efforts in job-seeking support interventions has been addressed earlier in this chapter in the section on youth well-being (see Box 4.1 for examples). Promoting mental health and social connectedness in the workplace is also a priority concern. Long working hours and job-related stress are significant drivers of negative mental health outcomes in Korea and reduce the amount of time and energy people have to spend on their relationships and social activities. The Korean Government has made efforts to reduce average working time, such as capping the maximum weekly working hours at 52 hours (down from 68 hours prior to 2018) (Ministry of Employment and Labour, 2021[94]), and more recently, government support is being provided to workplaces to facilitate the implementation of reduced working hours – such as though a 4.5 day working week – without reducing wages (Ministry of Employment and Labour, 2026[95]). Efforts to encourage employers to strengthen mental health in the workplace can also help support employee well-being, and OECD government incentives to encourage employers to safeguard employee mental health include regulation, financial incentives, guidelines and certification and award schemes (OECD, 2022[96]). Box 4.12 gives more detail on relevant international good practice examples from Japan and Canada.
Mandated manager-employee “stress checks”: Japan
Since December 2015, Japanese employers with more than 50 employees have been required to offer a “stress check” at least once a year. By 2018, 80.3% of employers had implemented this measure. Based on the results of these assessments, employers are obligated to make every effort to improve the work environment and reduce psychosocial stress. If an employee is identified as experiencing high levels of stress, they have the right to request a consultation with a physician. In such cases, the employer is legally required to arrange the consultation and, if necessary, modify the employee’s working conditions in accordance with the physician’s recommendations. A web portal called Kokoro no Mimi (Ears of the Mind) provides guidelines and tools for employers and managers to support the mental health of employees, and to implement the stress check.
National guidelines to help employers promote mentally healthy workplaces: Canada
Canada’s National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace, launched in 2013 by the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC), provides voluntary guidelines to help employers create psychologically healthy and safe work environments. It broadens the traditional scope of occupational health and safety by promoting equal value for mental and physical well-being. Unlike narrower frameworks that focus mainly on workload or access to counselling, the Standard identifies 13 factors affecting psychological health, including organisational culture, opportunities for growth, and fostering employee engagement with their work. To support implementation, Canada developed tools and resources, including through a three‑year MHCC project evaluating how 40 organisations of varying sizes and from different industries and sectors were implementing the Standard, and identifying cross-cutting good practices, enabling factors and barriers to adoption. In 2016, the MHCC and Ottawa Public Health also produced a series of animated videos explaining the 13 factors in detail, now part of the broader “have THAT talk” campaign to raise mental health awareness. A 2019 Ipsos poll found employees in compliant workplaces were less likely to view their environment as psychologically unsafe (5% vs. 13%) and took fewer days off for depression (7.4 vs. 12.5 days annually).
Source: OECD (2021[23]), Fitter Minds, Fitter Jobs, https://doi.org/10.1787/a0815d0f-en.
Strengthening integrated efforts to boost mental health and social connectedness of older people
Ensuring healthy ageing is already a well-established policy objective in OECD countries due to demographic change, and mental health and social connection promotion strategies for older people are central to the effectiveness of such strategies (McDaid, Hewlett and Park, 2017[97]). The comparative rapidity of population ageing in Korea, combined with high levels of old-age poverty (itself a predictor of low mental health and social connectedness outcomes), and a steeper drop-off in old age for many indicators of mental and social well-being in comparison with OECD peers underline the importance of integrated and forward-looking strategies to ensure thriving in old age for all Koreans. One important aspect of positive and proactive ageing strategies is to emphasise early interventions to promote good mental health and social connectedness through the life course, to minimise the lifetime accumulation of risk and deprivation (McDaid, Hewlett and Park, 2017[97]). The examples focussing on children, adolescents, young adults, and workers previously described in this section provide some examples. But while these approaches are relevant for the well-being of future older generations, impactful intervention examples also exist to help improve mental health and social connectedness of people who have already reached old age. These include:
Encouraging participation of older people in group and community activities. Given the higher risk of social isolation experienced by older people, actions to improve access to social contacts and networks and participation in social activities could help protect mental well-being in old age (McDaid, Hewlett and Park, 2017[97]). Box 4.8 already described the importance of adequate social infrastructure such as community centres and libraries, to allow space for people of all ages to come together. Other channels for facilitating social interaction include social prescribing, and community groups. Available evidence, while limited, suggest that older people do experience decreased social isolation from participation in such activities (World Health Organization, 2025[43]). Box 4.13 describes a range of international good practice examples, including a social prescribing example from Korea, as well as initiatives to encourage volunteering, group learning, intergenerational exchange, and other beneficial group activities. As older men are at particular risk of social isolation and deteriorating mental health, it is important to develop impactful targeted interventions for men, and one such example which has been implemented in multiple countries, Men’s Sheds, is also described in Box 4.13.
Increasing access to lifelong learning opportunities for older people (and through the life course). Lifelong learning has many individual and societal benefits. Adults who participate in formal or informal lifelong learning programmes are more likely to have higher self-esteem, a stronger sense of identity, and have better social connections, which all contribute to increased mental resilience (OECD, 2023[22]). Lifelong skills acquisition can also support career development and employability and could be especially impactful in Korea where adult cognitive skills are below the OECD average, in contrast with the high cognitive skills of students, as referenced in Chapter 3. Lifelong learning is particularly important in the context of a rapidly ageing society as learning activities have been shown to protect against cognitive decline or dementia, and participation in learning activities can also promote social interaction, which helps to prevent loneliness and reduce risk of depression (OECD, 2023[22]). Overall, lifelong learning is an important part of comprehensive policy strategies to take a more positive and proactive approach to population ageing. For example, the Stanford Center for Longevity has developed a New Map of Life to guide policymaking in a world where life expectancy is increasing and older populations are growing (The Stanford Centre on Longevity, 2022[98]). Lifelong learning is a central component of this approach, along with efforts to support financial security and physical health throughout the life course for future generations of older people, as well as more flexible employment arrangements to support longer working lives.
Social Prescribing for older adults in rural Korea
During the COVID‑19 pandemic, a small pilot social prescribing programme for older adults was conducted in a rural area in Korea to counteract the negative effects of social distancing measures. The programme lasted 10 weeks and was held in the community library and a communal garden area, encompassing “music storytelling”, in which individuals told stories with music therapy techniques, a self-help group and gardening. Although the pilot only involved 16 older adults, participation in the programme was associated with significant decreases in loneliness and depression suggesting that scaling up the intervention could bring significant benefits for older Koreans living in rural areas (World Health Organization, 2025[43]).
Act-Belong-Commit (ABCs), Australia and various countries
Originally developed by researchers in Western Australia in the early 2000s, the ABCs have been adopted by a range of other actors worldwide including schools, universities and community organisations, and the programme has received government funding in Australia, Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland and Norway (OECD, 2023[22]). The ABCs encourage people to be physically, mentally, and socially engaged through the three core principles of Act (keeping alert and engaged by keeping mentally, socially, spiritually, and physically active), Belong (developing a strong sense of belonging by keeping up friendships, joining groups, and participating in community activities) and Commit (doing things that provide meaning and purpose in life like taking up challenges, supporting causes, and helping others). There is evidence that these 3 behavioural principles contribute to increasing levels of positive mental health and physical health, with universal relevance across different cultures (Donovan and Anwar-McHenry, 2014[99]). While the ABCs are relevant for all ages, research in Ireland has shown that engagement with the ABCs demonstrates significant protective effects against anxiety. Depression, and cognitive decline for older adults (Santini et al., 2017[100]). Evaluations of the programme show that, by presenting mental health in a positive rather than illness context, the campaign serves to destigmatise mental illness and encourage openness about mental health issues (Donovan and Anwar-McHenry, 2014[99]).
Men’s Sheds, Australia and worldwide
A Men’s Shed is a dedicated, friendly and welcoming meeting place where men come together and undertake a variety of mutually agreed activities such as making, repairing, or repurposing, and supporting local community projects. It is based on the notion that men may find it difficult to speak openly face‑to-face, but engaging with a common project can facilitate social interaction in a more organic manner. While Men’s Sheds are open to all ages, they are particularly effective at catering to the needs of older retired men (Cordier and Wilson, 2013[101]). The Men’s Sheds approach was first developed in Australia in the 1990s, but has been adapted in multiple countries, including Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, Ireland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. It is estimated that the number of Men’s Sheds globally is approaching 1 800 supporting an estimated 100 000 men (International Men’s Sheds Organisation, 2025[102]). According to one 2023 evaluation in the United Kingdom, 97% of Shed members felt they had made new friends in the community, 89% experienced a decrease in depression, 88% felt more connected to the community, and 75% felt less anxious through regular participation; further 39% of Shed leaders believe that participation prevented at least one member from attempting suicide (UKMSA, 2025[103]).
Universities of the Third Age (U3As), the United Kingdom
The University of the Third Age is an informal lifelong learning movement for older people. It was first established in the early 1980s in the United Kingdom, inspired in part by the French Université du Troisième Age concept, but adapted to incorporate learner-led rather than institutional education. The peer-to-peer learning model allows members to choose the subject areas, content and pace of study. U3As are completely self-funded by participating learners. A 2018 study of the experiences of around 800 U3A participants found that outcomes from participation included: making new friendships and feeling supported (91%), learning new skills (84%), feeling healthier (55%), becoming engaged with the community (50%), manage life changes, retirement, illness or bereavement (50%), and building confidence (U3A, 2018[104]).
Elderlearn, Denmark
Elderlearn is a Danish initiative that addresses loneliness among older adults while empowering them to contribute meaningfully to society. The programme connects isolated seniors with immigrants who are learning Danish, arranging weekly visits that foster social connection and support language development.Through these conversations, Elderlearn offers older adults an opportunity to support others and remain active contributors to their communities, regardless of physical limitations, by sharing their time, experience, and knowledge as volunteers (Grey4Green, 2025[105]).
REPRINTS, Japan
The “Research of Productivity by Intergenerational Sympathy,” or REPRINTS, programme in Japan, has been running since 2004 (Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerentology, n.d.[106]). Initially designed as a research project by the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, the programme expanded to eight locations reaching about 300 people by 2016. REPRINTS trains volunteers over the age of 60 to read picture books to schoolchildren. Its purpose is to study the beneficial effects of intergenerational exchange between senior volunteers and children, and it has been shown to decrease loneliness, and increase well-being and neighbourhood trust for older people (Murayama et al., 2019[107]).
Strengthening data quality and availability on mental health and social connectedness
The basis for the effective design of policies to address mental health and social connectedness is the existence of a comprehensive evidence base to monitor individual and population outcomes, and to underpin research and analysis on drivers and policy impacts. Korea has developed several surveys to measure population mental health, including a National Mental Health Survey for adults (2020-2021), an adapted survey for children and adolescents (2022-2023), as well as one for out-of-school children and adolescents (2023), a Substance Use survey (2021) and a Serious Mental Illness Survey (2023). In 2024, these different survey vehicles were integrated into a combined and improved survey to more accurately estimate the prevalence of mental disorders, to obtain timelier and more policy-relevant evidence, and to make microdata available for mental health research (National Center for Mental Health Research Institute, 2023[108]). Korea’s Social Survey and Social Integration survey also collect information on loneliness, satisfaction with relationships, sense of community belonging, and other relevant aspects of social connections, while the Time Use Survey provides information on social activities and time spent with others (Mahoney et al., 2024[44]).
While mental health and social connections are areas which are now increasingly recognised by OECD governments to be important to measure, a number of challenges remain in terms of obtaining high-quality and internationally-comparable statistics, either because of a proliferation of established measurement tools (in the case of mental health), or a relative lack of robust standardised approaches (in the case of social connections) (Mahoney et al., 2024[44]; OECD, 2023[109]). The OECD evaluated international measurement in both these areas in recent years, and relevant insights for Korea’s ongoing measurement agenda include:
Internationally, the most commonly-used summary measures of mental ill-health (covering common mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression) are the PHQ‑8 (short for the 8‑item Patient Health Questionnaire) and GAD‑7 (Generalised Anxiety Disorder 7‑item questionnaire) screening tools (OECD, 2023[109]). Korea is encouraged to maintain its regular inclusion of the PHQ‑8 in order to support international comparability of mental ill-health prevalence.
Supplementing measurement of the prevalence of mental ill-health with the inclusion of standardised questions to measure positive mental health (the prevalence of high levels of emotional and psychological well-being), such as the WHO‑5 or SWEMWBS (Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale), would allow for more systemic and internationally comparable information on positive aspects such as feelings of optimism, self-efficacy, agency, and social connectedness (OECD, 2023[109]).
A single summary question on general mental health could be included across different measurement instruments to allow for the joint analysis of mental health outcomes and a range of associated variables. While more research is still needed to understand the validity and explanatory power of single‑question mental health items, available evidence does suggest it can be useful and meaningful to include such a question as “In general, how is your mental health? Excellent / Very good / Good / Fair / Poor” (OECD, 2023[109]).
In addition, collecting data patient-reported data on experiences of mental healthcare can help support efforts to deliver more person-centred care. Korea collects data on patient-reported experience measures (PREMs), which are used to obtain patients’ views and observations on aspects of healthcare services they have received (e.g. communication with nurses and doctors, staff responsiveness, discharge and care co‑ordination), although these results are not publicly reported. It does not routinely collect data on patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), which provide the patient’s perspective on their health status (e.g. symptom burden, side effects, psychological well-being and social functioning) (OECD, 2021[29]). Routinely collecting and publishing data on both patient experiences and outcomes can enable a broader understanding of mental health system performance from the service users’ perspective (OECD, 2021[29]).
Maintaining the inclusion of questions related to social connectedness in regular surveys on an ongoing basis will improve the timeliness and length of time series available.
Improving measurement of digital time use and engagement, and associated linkages with mental health, social connectedness, and broader well-being outcomes could help build the evidence base on drivers, outcomes, and effective interventions for safe and positive online engagement, particularly for children and adolescents.
Government action has helped narrow gender gaps across a range of areas in Korea
Gender gaps in well-being persist in Korea, despite strong policy recognition and action. Discrimination on the basis of gender is prohibited in the Korean constitution dating back to 1946, and a wide range of gender equity policies and legislation have been enacted in Korea, and particularly in the last four decades since the establishment of the Equal Employment Act in 1987 and the Framework Act on Women’s Development in 1995 (later renamed the Gender Equality Act in 2014).13 In recent years, the fertility crisis has brought additional urgency to policy action for improving gender equality in work and family life, as the difficulty Korean men and women (but especially mothers) face in combining career and parenthood is recognised as a major contributing factor to declining birth rates (see Chapter 3). Increased awareness of gender-based violence, abuse, and harassment, especially since the Korean #MeToo movement (see also Chapter 3) has also led to targeted policy packages and the revision of laws to improve women’s safety in Korea in recent years (Hasunuma and Shin, 2019[110]). Korea has had a Ministry dedicated to gender equality issues since 2001, with the present iteration named the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (MOGEF).
Korean government policy initiatives to reduce gender gaps have included:
Educational attainment. Korea’s achievement in improving women’s educational attainment is one of the more striking examples of successful policy action to decrease (and in this case, even reverse) gender gaps in equality of opportunity. Specific policies to boost female educational attainment were included in the national plan for the first time in the late 1980s (the 6th 5‑Year Plan for Economic and Social Development 1987-1991). Subsequent national plans over the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s continued to include measures to eliminate gender inequalities in the education process, including reinforcement of vocational training for female students, and measures to encourage women to enter the science and technology sectors (Ahn, 2011[111]).
Political leadership. To address the low level of women’s participation in politics, legislative gender quotas were first introduced for the 2000 national elections. This led to a significant increase in female legislators, nearly doubling their representation from approximately 3% in 1996 to 6% in 2000. Since then, there has been a continued upward trend in the proportion of female members in Korea’s legislature (Kim, Lee and Park, 2025[112]). Currently, the Public Official Election Act set target quotas mandating that women candidates account for at least 50% of the national proportional representation nominations and at least 30% of local constituency nominations. In 2024, women represented 20% of all legislators (against an overall target of 33.3%) (UN Women, 2025[113]). Additionally, the Political Funds Act was revised in 2024 to include provisions that increased support payments for political parties that nominated more women (UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2024[114]).
Public sector management. The Korean Government Plan for Improving Gender Representation in the Public Sector aims to increase the percentage of women in the senior civil service from 11.5% in 2023 to 13.5% in 2027 (UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2024[114]).
Private sector leadership. In order to boost the representation of women in private sector decision making, the Financial Investment Services and Capital Markets Act was amended in 2020 to prohibit stock-listed corporations with more than a certain amount of equity capital from constituting their entire board of directors with members of a specific gender only. As a result, the share of female board executives, which stood at 4.9% in 2020, rose to 16.3% by 2023 (UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, 2024[115]).
Korea has implemented a number of gender mainstreaming initiatives to embed gender equity principles in government decision making
The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (MOGEF) is responsible for issues relating to planning and integrating policies promoting women’s rights and interests and improving their status; formulating, co‑ordinating, and supporting family and multicultural family policies; child-related policies; and policies relating to fostering, protecting, and promoting the welfare of youth (Government of Korea, 2023[116]). Since 2025, MOGEF is also responsible for selected employment equality efforts that were previously under the responsibility of the Ministry of Employment and Labour such as wage transparency systems and employment gender quotas.
The Korean Government also utilises Gender Impact Assessment (GIA) system and gender budgeting to further ensure that gender equity is considered in policy evaluation and resource allocation. These approaches have been in place since the 2000s, and are considered to have contributed to improving the gender awareness of public officials, strengthening gender perspectives in government decision making processes, and helping ensure adjusted budget allocation for programmes with a large gender gap in benefits (Nam-Gung et al., 2022[117]; Cho et al., 2020[118]). Korea received an “Advanced practice” score on the 2022 OECD Gender Budgeting Index (OECD, 2023[119]).
However, challenges remain in terms of the full acceptance and implementation of these institutional gender mainstreaming efforts. For example, there is evidence that gender impact assessment is often not carried out in a rigourous manner, and its quality and effectiveness can be limited by a lack of gender expertise on the part of civil servants (Nam-Gung et al., 2022[117]). A 2020 government self-review of gender budgeting in Korea recommended a number of areas for potential improvements including: implementation of gender impact analysis for major national policies and fiscal management plans, introduction of ex ante gender impact assessment (to support ex post assessment), a review of gender equality goals and improvements to analytical methods, strengthening the legal foundations for gender budgeting, training and capacity-building on gender budgeting for government decision makers, and the establishment of dedicated teams in the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and under the Special Committee on Budget and Accounts to strengthen gender budgeting development and appraisal (Cho et al., 2020[118]). In addition, changes in the political context can dictate the level of support given to gender mainstreaming initiatives, leading to active resistance from public officials (Martínez Guzmán, 2024[120]), as well as calls to reverse or eliminate previous initiatives (Lee, 2025[121]).
Traditional gender roles are relatively prevalent in Korean societal attitudes
As shown in Chapter 3, Korea has a high prevalence of attitudes supporting gendered division of work and family roles (e.g. male breadwinner and female care‑giver roles) amongst both men and women, albeit with higher rates of prevalence for men, relative to all other OECD countries. These attitudes are reflected in the reality of gender division of paid and unpaid work in Korea: as Chapter 3 noted, Korean women spend almost 3 hours more than Korean men doing unpaid work such as housework and childcare duties (compared with an average OECD gender gap of just above 2 hours) and Korean men work 2.5 hours more in paid work than Korean women (higher than the OECD average of 1.6 hours). When combining paid and unpaid work, women in Korea – as in most OECD countries – work longer hours than men on a typical day.
As a general rule across countries, social attitudes and informal behaviours regarding gender roles and gender equality become ingrained in people from a young age, conditioning them to accept the status quo, and making them resistant to change over time (Kim, 2022[122]). The expectation for women to be carers has even been given as one reason for the reversal in son preference for daughter preference in Korea in recent years. As Korea shifted from an agrarian society to a more affluent one with a social safety net, the financial support traditionally provided by sons has become less important than the intergenerational family care more often provided by daughters to ageing parents. As people live longer, they may feel daughters are more likely to provide companionship than sons (Chun and Das Gupta, 2022[123]).
Efforts to achieve gender equity have faced increasing resistance in recent years, accompanied by rising tensions between young men and women
Overall, there are signs of an increasing disconnect between men and women in Korea, and particularly young men and women. In a 2021 Ipsos survey, Koreans reported the highest level of tensions14 between men and women overall amongst the 28 countries surveyed (Duffy and Skinner, 2021[124]), and in recent major elections in Korea, there has consistently been a 15‑30 p.p. difference in young men and women’s electoral support for the country’s main political parties (Kim, 2025[125]; Gong, 2024[126]), signalling a divergence in political values overall, and mirroring similar trends in other OECD countries such as France, Germany and the United States (Jung, Bendeich and Escritt, 2025[127]). Finding a way to bridge this gender gap in attitudes and finding ways to depoliticise the conversation around gender equity, will be key to the development and effectiveness of gender equity policies.
Korean women’s social movements have been important drivers of changing attitudes and eradicating stereotypes over the years and have been instrumental in achieving the substantial gains in gender equality of rights and legislative protection for women to date.15 However, recent years have also seen an emergence of skepticism and resistance towards certain aspects of feminist activism in Korea, as well as growing discontent with the expansion of policies designed to support women, particularly among young men (mirroring similar trends in many other OECD countries).
Among young people in Korea, particularly those aged 18‑29, gender differences in policy preferences can be observed which, depending on the policy domain, exhibit gaps ranging from approximately 22% to 33%. Specifically, young men tend to express relatively lower levels of support for the expansion of gender quotas in public and private institutions and for the introduction of non-consensual sex offenses, while showing comparatively higher levels of support for the abolition of women-only universities, the strengthening of penalties for individuals found guilty of fabricating sexual harassment allegations, and preferential treatment for military veterans.16 By contrast, young women tend to demonstrate higher levels of support for policies that provide targeted advantages for women, while expressing comparatively lower levels of support for policies that primarily benefit men, such as preferential treatment for military veterans. However, in the area of family-friendly policies, including fertility, childcare, and work-life balance measures, support was observed among both men and women (Mo and You, 2025[128]).
The drivers of this growing dissatisfaction with the expansion of policies that prioritise or provide targeted support for women amongst young Korean men are likely complex. Such negative attitudes have been linked with economic anxiety (Kim and Park, 2024[129]) as well as status envy, referring to situations where young men may not be economically deprived in absolute terms, but have not achieved a material situation in line with their aspirations (Mo and You, 2025[128]). Diverging gender attitudes towards marriage and family are also evident, with an increasing number of young women deciding not to marry (Mo and You, 2025[128]). According to one survey, only 8% of unmarried Korean young women in their 20s and 30s say getting married is extremely or very important to them and 11% say the same about having children, compared with 26% and 28% respectively of their male peers. Causal analysis showed that just telling individuals that women are much less likely to want to marry compared to men makes men, and especially those in their prime marital years, less willing to support measures promoting gender equality (Mo and You, 2025[128]).
Promoting equitable gender norms and outcomes
All OECD countries face challenges in achieving gender equality, and many of the priority issues in Korea are shared across national governments. Korea is already advancing policy efforts in a number of key areas identified by OECD work (OECD, 2023[130]), such as improving the gender division of paid work and unpaid care and non-care work (e.g. through expanded provision for parental leave, enshrined in law), improving access and affordability of early childhood education and care, promoting flexible working arrangements for a better work-life balance, and combatting gender-based violence (Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, 2023[131]; Government of Korea, 2024[132]).
However, social and structural barriers, such as bias, discrimination, and gender stereotypes can hinder the effectiveness of gender equality policies. For example, discrimination in the workplace can sometimes create a gap between legal provisions and the uptake of gender equality policies such as parental leave or flexible working arrangements in practice (see Box 4.14). The remainder of this section draws from OECD research and international good practice examples to highlight potential opportunities to further strengthen gender equality action by addressing these barriers. It includes insights and examples on efforts regarding:
Strengthening gender data collection efforts;
Strengthening gender mainstreaming efforts;
Employing school-based interventions to combat gender stereotypes;
Implementing proactive measures to overcome gender inequality in work and leadership;
Continuing and expanding efforts to combat gender-based violence and harassment; and
Engaging men and boys to be part of the solution.
Workplace discrimination related to pregnancy, childbirth, and parental leave is prohibited by law in Korea, however one in four Korean women report feeling discriminated against during job recruitment (24.4%) and regarding wages (25.1%) compared with only 7.6% of Korean men reporting discrimination in these areas (OECD, 2025[7]). Korean women reporting discrimination may find their cases dismissed due to lack of evidence, or resolved without adequate sanctions on those responsible for the discrimination, leading to situations where women do not make formal efforts to report their experiences (OECD, 2024[2]). To address these issues, in May 2022, Korea implemented a remedial mechanism for gender-based discrimination in the workplace through the Labour Relations Commission (LRC), bolstering institutional efforts to provide effective recourse for victims. Up to August 2025, 85 cases regarding gender discrimination in employment were filed and processed through the system, with 54 of them (63.5%) being resolved through not only remedial orders but also conciliation, mediation, or case withdrawals based on agreement between the involved parties, subsequently driving a more than doubling in reports concerning workplace gender equality violations (including sexual harassment, discrimination, and maternity protection) from 1 160 in 2018 to 2 440 in 2024.1
Parental leave is a crucial policy tool to support women to combine career and family life. In principle, Korea has one of the more generous parental leave allowances amongst OECD countries: the system currently provides each parent with an entitlement of one year of parental leave, with the total duration of parental leave being extended to 1.5 years (18 months) when utilised by both parents. While the share of working parents (and especially fathers) actually taking such leave has tended to be lower in Korea than in most OECD countries (OECD, 2025[7]), concerted efforts to promote a shared parenting culture and overcome potential concerns about negative career impact have successfully increased parental leave uptake, including for fathers, in recent years. In 2024, Korea reformed its parental leave system to promote a shared parenting culture by extending the leave period and increasing the maximum benefit amount when both parents take leave together (OECD, 2025[7]). Subsequently, in January to September 2025, the number of annual parental leave benefit recipients increased by 37% compared with the same period of the previous year (rising from 103 596 to 141 909 recipients), and over the same period the number of male parental leave users saw an increase of 57.2% (from 33 257 to 52 279 recipients).2
The provision of flexible working arrangements, such as reduced working hours and teleworking, have also been proved to prevent career interruptions for women, as well as increase job satisfaction and improve employees’ ability to concentrate. However employees hesitate to use such as options even when available due to fear of negative career consequences, and evidence shows that using flexible working arrangements increased employees’ risk of scoring low on performance evaluations (Shin and Lee, 2021[133]). Overall, strengthening sanctions against discrimination in the workplace and empowering the investigation and enforcement of gender equity policies by auditing bodies and labour inspectors may help support the implementation of workplace gender equality policies in Korea (OECD, 2024[2]).
1. Data provided to authors by the Ministry of Employment and Labour.
2. Ibid.
Strengthening gender data collection efforts
A strong evidence base is essential for effective policymaking and for combatting misinformation and misinformed attitudes about gender equality outcomes. Official definitions of gender statistics emphasise not only the systematic disaggregation of data by sex, but also the need to produce data reflecting issues related to all aspects of women’s and men’s lives, including their specific needs, opportunities or contributions to society; being grounded in concepts and definitions that adequately reflect the diversity of women and men; and data collection methods that take into account stereotypes and social and cultural factors that may induce gender biases (United Nations, 2016[134]).
Korea has already undertaken many steps to improve gender data availability. Since 2011, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (MOGEF) and the Ministry of Data and Statistics co‑ordinated efforts to identify and implement necessary statistical development, such as the expansion of gender-disaggregated data for policy use, and the development of new survey questions that cover specific aspects of womens’ and men’s lives (Government of Korea, 2024[132]). MOGEF and other relevant ministries also develop fact-finding surveys on under-measured areas related to gender equality. For example, in 2021, MOGEF conducted a first fact-finding survey on violence against women (with results published in 2022), and in 2027, it will conduct an expanded survey on violence against women, sexual violence, domestic violence, and stalking, integrating feedback from the Ministry of Data and Statistics. MOGEF also plans to undertake a fact-finding survey on human trafficking every 5 years, and the Ministry of Education has conducted fact-finding surveys on sexual harassment and sexual violence in the education sector.
A stock take of international gender data utilised in OECD analysis highlighted three priority areas to improve quality and policy relevance of gender statistics across all OECD countries, namely: greater investment in less-covered domains (such as gender perspectives in transport, technology or energy sectors); the exploration of solutions to improve timeliness and granularity; and a deeper incorporation of intersectional approaches (OECD, 2025[135]). The development of nowcasting techniques, and the usage of alternative data sources such as administrative and private sector data sources (e.g. social media) provide potential opportunities to improve data timeliness and granularity (OECD, 2025[135]). New data sources can also inform policy research on specific gender issues. For example, the use of social media data can shed insight into the prevalence of online harassment and its association with other adverse outcomes (UN Women - World Health Organization, 2023[136]): one United States study found a direct correlation between misogynistic social media statements and incidents of domestic and family violence across 47 states (Blake et al., 2021[137]). Korea’s continued expansion of statistics disaggregated by gender should also be maintained as a priority, and combined with disaggregation by age, socio‑economic status, disability status and other relevant factors to understand how these interact with – and sometimes heighten – gender differences, for more effective targeted policies, programmes, and resource allocation.
OECD assessments of the production of gender data in member countries also highlight the importance of co‑ordinated, government-wide strategies for gender data governance (OECD, 2025[138]). The OECD recommends that ensuring the use of gender data in policymaking requires a comprehensive set of actions, including: implementing a gender data strategy that identifies gender and intersectional data gaps and provides a plan to fill these gaps, assigning roles to key gender data stakeholders, establishing a regular co‑ordination mechanism, elaborating publication and dissemination strategies, and identifying gender data analysis capacity-building opportunities (OECD, 2025[138]).
The Korean Government’s efforts of recent years to improve the measurement of gender-based violence (GBV) should also be maintained, as this is a high priority issue which is complex to measure. OECD recommendations on the measurement of gender-based violence stress the importance of the collection of information on different forms of GBV, as well as the inclusion of information on perpetrators. They also recommend that GBV data should be gathered both through surveys, but also directly from victims/survivors and the service providers who interact with them, such as healthcare professionals and other social service providers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and police (OECD, 2023[139]). Box 4.15 provides an international good practice example of the co-production of data on violence against women with civil society from Italy.
In May 2022, the Italian Government adopted Law 53 aimed at improving systematic data collection on cases of gender-based violence against women. In response, the Italian National Statistical Institute and the National Department of Equal Opportunity have developed an integrated system of information concerning violence against women in Italy, bringing together data from national and local government sources, as well using data provided by civil society organisations running anti-violence centres, women’s shelters, and other services for women experiencing violence. Istat and the Department of Equal Opportunity collaborated with civil society representatives to integrate the official and non-official sources, co-designing indicators, definitions, and priority data gaps. When further harmonisation issues were identified in the implementation stage, an inter-agency working group was established with non-governmental and regional representatives alongside national experts to negotiate appropriate solutions. Finally, in order to address under-reporting of gender-based violence and gain a more accurate picture of the true prevalence of such crimes, the 2025 official survey on women’s safety (previously carried out in 2006 and 2014) has been undertaken with the co‑operation of civil society organisations to conduct interviews and collect relevant data. Data from the survey will be used to inform policy action at the national and local level.
Sources: Istat (n.d.[140]), “Violence against women”, https://www.istat.it/en/statistical-themes/focus/violence-against-women/ and Pratesi (2024[141]), Istat presentation given at the 7th OECD World Forum, November 2024, https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/7th-oecd-world-forum-on-well-being-rome-monica-pratesi/273500905#1.
Strengthening gender mainstreaming efforts
While a majority of OECD countries have established some form of legal basis or binding mandate underpinning gender mainstreaming in government decision making (29 OECD countries in 2021), OECD work has identified a number of common obstacles to the effective implementation of gender-responsive policymaking across countries. These include longstanding gender biases, a non-systematic application of governance tools, limited government capacities, and a lack of gender-disaggregated data in many sectors (OECD, 2023[130]). In addition to strengthening gender data availability and quality (considered above), OECD work highlights the importance of sound legal and operational frameworks, strong political leadership, and effective horizontal co‑ordination mechanisms to overcome silos and barriers in the implementation of gender mainstreaming approaches (OECD, 2023[130]; 2023[142]).
A 2023 assessment of gender mainstreaming tools by the Korean Women’s Development Institute identified potential areas for improvement across these areas. It highlighted a need to improve linkages across relevant government processes, both between and within different departments, noting that, for example, gender-responsive budgeting is conducted separately from the Ministry of Economy and Finance’s financial performance evaluation. The study recommended measures to achieve greater co‑ordination and integration both between the different pillars of the government’s gender strategy (impact assessment, budgeting, and data collection), as well as across different government departments, including the potential for a stronger central government co‑ordination role through the Office for Policy Co‑ordination (a strategic horizontal co‑ordination unit located in the Prime Minister’s Office) (Lee et al., 2023[143]). The Third Basic Plan for Gender Equality Policies (2023-2027) recognised the importance of strengthened institutional functioning and co‑ordination on gender equality policies and included a pillar dedicated to improvements in this area (Government of Korea, 2024[132]).
Organisational change is a long-term, iterative process and implementation barriers take time to dismantle, however ongoing institutional investment in co‑ordination, capacity-building, and performance evaluation can help improve the mainstreaming of gender approaches in policymaking over time. Box 4.16 outlines the Canadian Government’s efforts to strengthen the implementation of its gender impact assessment method, Gender-Based Analysis Plus. In addition, efforts to rectify potential gender bias in the content and language of existing laws and legal frameworks can further strengthen mainstreaming initiatives.17
Canada first formally established a Gender-Based Analysis approach in 1995 as part of the government’s implementation of the United Nations’ Beijing Platform for Action on gender equality. In 2011, the methodology was broadened and became Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA Plus), with the “Plus” being added to encourage the consideration of the multiple factors that intersect and shape experiences and outcomes beyond sex and gender, such as such as age, disability, education, ethnicity, economic status, geography (including rurality), language, race, religion, and sexual orientation. The aim of the GBA Plus methodology is to support the development of responsive and inclusive policies, programmes, and other initiatives by providing a deeper understanding of who is impacted by the issue or opportunity being addressed by the initiative; help identify how the initiative could be tailored to meet diverse needs of the people most impacted; and anticipate and mitigate any barriers to accessing or benefitting from the initiative. The GBA Plus methodology is used in conjunction with Canada’s Quality of Life framework to support departments’ planning, development, implementation, measurement and reporting of their programmes’ impacts, and is overseen by the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality (WAGE), with support from the Treasury Board Secretariat and the Privy Council Office.
In order to support and strengthen the implementation of GBA Plus, the Office of the Auditor General undertook reviews of its use in government decision making in 2009, 2015, and 2022. Each review identified barriers to uptake and made recommendations to the lead bodies responsible for its application. In turn these bodies issued a response and action plan for further improving implementation. For example, challenges identified in the 2022 audit include: lack of timely feedback and guidance from the lead responsible agencies to policy departments; lack of adequate disaggregated data to inform intersectional analysis; and inadequate public reporting on the implementation of GBA Plus to strengthen accountability. In response, the lead agencies committed to specific actions to tackle all issue areas highlighted in the audit, including commitments from WAGE to increase funding and other resources dedicated to training and research on the drivers of gender-based and intersectional inequalities.
Biennial government-wide implementation surveys show progress in many implementation areas over time. For example, the 2022-2023 implementation survey (covering 87 federal departments and agencies representing 98% of federal spending) showed that the proportion of departments stating they “almost always or always” integrated GBA Plus into different steps of the policy cycle increased from 21‑30% in 2021 to 36‑53% in 2023, depending on the type of application, including problem definition, analysis and research, development of options, decision making, policy/programme implementation, and policy/programme evaluation. The share of respondents stating that lack of training represented a barrier to GBA Plus implementation also fell from 72% to 49% between the 2021 and 2023 survey rounds, indicating that investment in training and capacity-building resources had been effective during this period. However, the majority of respondents in 2023 (60‑87%) reported that data availability, inadequate co‑ordination mechanisms, and the time burden required remain significant challenges, indicating that continued efforts are required in these areas to continue strengthening GBA Plus implementation.
Sources: OECD (2025[144]), Canada’s Gender Based Analysis Plus (Case study), https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/well-being-knowledge-exchange-platform-kep_93d45d63-en/canada-s-gender-based-analysis-plus_c0ddec0a-en.html; Government of Canada (2024[145]), Gender-based Analysis Plus Implementation Survey Results 2022-2023, https://www.canada.ca/en/women-gender-equality/gender-based-analysis-plus/implementation-survey/2022-2023.html; Government of Canada (2023[146]), Management Response and Action Plan to GBA Plus Audit 2022, https://www.canada.ca/en/women-gender-equality/transparency/reports-auditor-general-canada/management-response-action-plan.html.
Employing school-based interventions to combat gender stereotypes
Attitudes regarding gender roles and expectations begin to develop at a young age, and formal education and the school environment are important channels for combatting gender stereotypes. School-based interventions can be particularly impactful across the following areas of relevance for Korea:
Career roles and aspirations. As Chapter 3. noted, Korean girls are under-represented in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and communications technology (STEM) fields of study and career paths, including artificial intelligence, which will be an increasingly important employment sector in the coming decades. The Korean Government has been implementing policies to increase women’s participation in STEM for over two decades, since the 2002 Act on Fostering and Supporting Women Scientists and Technicians. Following the Act, successive 5‑year plans have established policy measures to promote women’s engagement in STEM. In addition, the Act established a dedicated institution, the Korea Foundation for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology (WISET) to develop tailored programmes to support women’s STEM participation throughout the life course (Moon, Oh and Ji, 2024[147]). The 5th Basic Plan for Fostering and Supporting Women in STEM (2024-2028) recognises the importance of early school interventions to encourage girls’ awareness and confidence to enter STEM fields, and includes measures to develop and distribute material targeting female primary school students on STEM study and career options, provide education for teachers and parents to strengthen their support for girls in STEM, and establish a STEM Girl’s Festival to further raise awareness (Government of Korea, 2024[148]). In addition, WISET has promoted female students’ awareness of STEM options through the “She did it” campaign since 2020, publicising the achievements of female scientists to encourage more women to enter the STEM field as well as changing public attitudes through more positive images of women in STEM roles (WISET Korea Foundation for Women in Science, 2024[149]). Box 4.17 presents international case studies which can provide further policy insights for encouraging female participation in STEM through education and school interventions.
Multimedia approaches to help students reflect on the role of gender in their career choices: Project BREAK! in Estonia, Iceland and Lithuania
Project BREAK! was developed from 2017-2019 with the support of EU funding. It used a multi-pronged approach to weaken gender stereotypes and encourage open-mindedness regarding career choices in young people, as well as those with the most power to influence them in those choices such as teachers, parents, career advisors, and employers. Components of the project included: the use of an interactive game platform “Kahoot!”, which encouraged participants to answer questions on common gender stereotypes to better understand their own biases; an 8‑episode television show called “Why Not?”, which followed the personal stories of characters considering non-typical career options; a radio show and online videos that explored gender career divides in more detail; and guidelines for career advisors to support them to draw on these resources and provide advice that better takes into account latent assumptions about gender. An evaluation of the programme in Estonia showed that 40% of Estonians were aware of the TV series, and young people who watched it felt more confident and better placed to make choices in their education and careers free of gender stereotypes. Overall, the initiative was also considered to help adults – including parents, teachers, and career advisors – become more aware of gender bias, and to support them in giving more open-minded advice and support to students.
Raising awareness and capacity building to promote girls’ engagement with digital technology: SparkDigiGirls in Greece, Lithunaia, Portugal and Slovenia
The Empower Girls Creativity Through Use of Digital Technologies (SparkDigiGirls) project aimed to encourage girls to explore digital technologies such as AR (Augmented Reality), VR (Virtual Reality), AI (Artificial Intelligence), IoT (Internet of things) and to feel more empowered to opt for STEM study and career options. It provided an online training platform targeted towards girls aged between 15 and 18, including exercises and resources to encourage digital creativity thinking to solve real-world problems in areas that interest them. It also encompassed a Female Role Model campaign, including inspirational testimonial videos from women with digital technology careers. Overall, 279 girls and 30 youth workers took part in the programme.
Source: OECD (2024[18]), OECD Youth Policy Toolkit, https://doi.org/10.1787/74b6f8f3-en; Roosalu et al. (2019[150]), Project BREAK! Evaluation, Guell Paule (2023[151]), SparkDigiGirls project description, https://digital-skills-jobs.europa.eu/en/inspiration/good-practices/sparkdigigirls-lithuania.
Sexual harassment and gender-based violence. School programmes can also help educate young people examine unconscious bias about male and female roles and expectations in society, and address harmful behaviours and attitudes that contribute to sexual harassment and gender-based violence (including intimate partner violence in adolescent relationships) (OECD, 2021[152]). There is also an increasing recognition in OECD countries of the need to develop GBV interventions that target men and boys directly (OECD, 2021[152]). Box 4.18 describes examples of school-based interventions to address sexual harassment and gender-based violence from Mexico and the United Kingdom.
Combatting dating violence: True Love, Mexico
“Amor… pero del Bueno” (True Love) was a 16‑week programme piloted in 2014 in two low-income high schools in Mexico City with the aim of preventing dating violence. The intervention consisted of interactive classroom activities (including co‑operative games, analysis of songs and videos, role‑playing, theatre, and study of personal and hypothetical situations) aiming to promote social and emotional skill development, and to change attitudes and beliefs towards norms on gender roles, relationships, and dating violence. The programme design was based in theory and empirical evidence that showed that poor communication, poor conflict management skills, traditional gender norms towards women, and the acceptance of violence have been linked to the perpetration and victimisation of dating violence. In addition to the classroom activities, the programme included activities focussed on fostering a supportive school environment to prevent dating violence through schoolyard activities for students, a workshop delivered to school staff, and educational material distributed throughout the campus. Some students in the pilot took part in both classroom and school-level activities, while others were only exposed to the school-level interventions. A short-term evaluation of the effectiveness of the impact showed that both male and female participants exhibited statistically significant reductions in beliefs and attitudes justifying sexism and violence in dating students (a 6% reduction for female students and a 7% reduction for males).
Working with boys and men to reduce sexual harassment in schools: UK National Education Union and Beyond Equality Toolkit
There is growing awareness of the level of sexual violence and sexual harassment in UK schools. Evidence reviews for the Home Office Strategy for Violence against Women and Girls found that education initiatives have achieved promising results for changing attitudes related to violence against women and girls. To support schools and educational workers to identify actions in everyday teaching practice, the UK National Education Union and education charity Beyond Equality developed a toolkit to enable safe and supportive work with boys as part of a whole school approach to address sexism and gender-based violence. Beyond Equality facilitates group-based discussions and activities with boys and young men in schools, as well as working with all staff to adopt a whole school approach to tacking sexism in schools. The workshops encourage participants to reflect on masculinities and engage them in gender equality, healthy relationships, gender-based violence prevention and mental well-being. Many boys participating in these activities say that it is their first opportunity to have an open and honest conversation about their experiences of sex, relationships, identity and other social issues. The toolkit includes a range of examples for different age groups including role plays and art-based interactive activities, with the aim of “making the invisible visible” in terms of forms and impacts of sexual discrimination and harassment, and of understandings of masculinity and gender roles.
Working with sport coaches and male athletes in high school to prevent violence: Coaching Boys into Men, the United States
Coaching Boys Into Men (CBIM) is a violence prevention programme that trains high school coaches to teach young male athletes healthy relationship skills, mental health practices, and to disassociate notions of strength and violence. It provides clear teaching tools comprising useful information, coaching advice, and messages to help teach male athletes the importance of respect for themselves, others, and particularly the women and girls in their lives. Topics covered include: Respect for women; personal responsibility; standing against demeaning language; ending bragging about sexual reputation and speaking disrespectfully about a girl’s sexual reputation; addressing disrespectful behaviour towards women and girls; the responsibility of physical strength; managing aggression; refusing to abuse or be violent; standing up against other friends’ inappropriate behaviour; and modelling respectful behaviour towards women and girls. Evaluations of the programme showed that coaches who participated in the training had positive attitudes towards gender equality and were more likely to intervene when witnessing disrespectful behaviours.
Sources: OECD (2024[18]), OECD Youth Policy Toolkit, https://doi.org/10.1787/74b6f8f3-en; Sosa-Rubi et al. (2017[153]), “True Love: Effectiveness of a School-Based Program to Reduce Dating Violence Among Adolescents in Mexico City”, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-016-0718-4; UK National Education Union and Beyond Equality (2023[154]), “Working with boys and young men to prevent sexism and sexual harassment”, https://neu.org.uk/latest/library/working-boys-and-young-men-prevent-sexism-and-sexual-harassment; Family Violence Prevention Fund (n.d.[155]), “Coaching Boys into Men”, https://www.endvawnow.org/uploads/browser/files/Coaching%20Boys%20into%20Men.pdf.
Eradicating gender bias in educational content. Targeted school initiatives such as those described in Box 4.17 and Box 4.18 may however be undermined by the continued existence of gender stereotyping in textbooks, curricula, and teaching approaches (OECD, 2023[130]). Korea has made improvements in the gender neutrality of educational material18 and has included gender equality in the curriculum of teacher training colleges since 2021 in order to reduce unconscious bias of teaching staff (OECD, 2023[130]). There may still be some opportunities to further strengthen the gender neutrality of educational content, however, as some elements of gender stereotypes continue to exist in some cases (UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, 2024[115]). Strengthening gender neutrality in school sexual health education could also contribute to reducing harmful behaviour, as existing standard textbooks and teaching material often focus narrowly on preventing risky social behaviours and avoid discussion of broader issues of safety, respect, consent, and gender equity, as well as sometimes including harmful gender stereotypes (Jeong, Kim and Koh, 2023[156]).
Implementing proactive measures to overcome gender inequality in work and leadership
The structural barriers preventing women’s equal participation in work and leadership cannot be addressed through education and awareness-raising alone however, and more proactive measures are also needed to shift imbalances. While gender gaps in employment, wages, workplace senior management, and political leadership are particularly pronounced in Korea, these are challenges shared across OECD countries and OECD work on gender inequalities highlight a number of policy recommendations to address them.
To combat gender gaps in the workplace, the OECD recommends policy packages that combine efforts targetting households to mitigate the “motherhood penalty” for female workers, with efforts targeted at firms and employers such as equal pay and anti-discrimination laws (OECD, 2023[130]). Regarding the former aspect, the Korean Government has introduced a widespread package of household-level policies, particularly as part of efforts to combat declining fertility, including investment in the capacity and quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC) and out-of-school hours services, and the expansion of parental leave and flexible working hours for working mothers and fathers to promote a more equal distribution of household responsibilities (Kim, 2025[157]).
The Korean Government has also introduced a number of employer-level policies, such as mandatory quotas to encourage female participation and leadership in public sector management, and private sector board representation, as noted earlier. These could be further strengthened, however. For example, while the 2020 amendment to the Financial Investment Services and Capital Markets Act to prohibit all-male boards for major corporations was successful in more than tripling female board representation in a relatively short time (from 4.9% in 2020, rose to 16.3% by 2023), this is still only around half of the OECD average rate in 2024 (32.5%) and women will likely remain in the minority in business leadership without additional measures (OECD, 2024[2]). Further progress could be made by increasing the ambition of representation quotas beyond the “at least one woman” target. For example, France, Iceland, Italy and Norway require at least 40% of women on boards (OECD, 2023[130]). Quotas are also best employed as short- to medium-term measures, and a sustainable approach to gender equality in the workplace depends on ensuring a gender-balanced workforce throughout all levels of organisational hierarchies (OECD, 2023[130]). Additional measures of relevance in the Korean context include:
Strengthened anti-discrimination measures. As noted in Box 4.14, there is sometimes a gap between legal provisions (such as access to parental leave and flexible working arrangements) and their uptake in practice, in part due to workplace discrimination. As also noted in Box 4.14, the Korean Government has undertaken efforts to support workers who report discrimination. Additional measures to support the enforcement of anti-discrimination measures that could be strengthened in Korea include putting the burden of proof on the employer to make the case they did not take discriminatory action; strengthening the capacity of the labour inspectorate to enforce adherence to anti-discrimination legislation; and imposing adequate sanctions on employers who apply discriminatory behaviour (OECD, 2019[9]).
Mandatory pay transparency reporting requirements. The reporting of gender wage gaps in the private sector could be rendered mandatory rather than voluntary, as is currently the case in Korea. Enabling policy measures could include providing clear guidelines and tools for employers’ reporting efforts; enforce reporting with a dedicated government actor such as the labour inspectorate; and conduct impact evaluations, including research on wage outcomes and policy process outcomes (OECD, 2023[130]).
Workplace efforts to overcome exclusionary informal networks and norms. Informal social networks and norms in the workplace can represent significant exclusionary barriers for women in Korea. Often, access to employment and mobility opportunities are provided through social ties established during military service19 or university studies and maintained through male‑dominated activities and socialising (Horak and Suseno, 2023[158]). Further, hierarchical social practices (such as women being expected to serve drinks to their seniors or superiors in work-related social settings) can undermine their capacity to be regarded as equal to their male counterparts at work (Horak and Suseno, 2023[158]). Employers could make proactive efforts to weaken the influence of trenchant norms and exclusionary networks such as through training, mentorship and networking programmes that facilitate the access and promotion of female talent in the workplace (OECD, 2020[159]). See Box 4.19 for more examples.
With regards to political leadership, mandatory quotas have also been effective at increasing female political representation in Korea. The imposition of a minimum share of female candidates in local and national elections introduced in the early 2000s led to a significant increase in female parliamentary and local government representatives in a relatively short time. As a result, political parties began recognising women’s competency in leadership leading to increased appointment of female ministers, and stronger support for female candidates to run in presidential elections, such as Korea’s eleventh president and the first female president in history, Park Geun-hye, in 2013 (Kim, Lee and Park, 2025[112]). Further, increased female representation in political leadership has been accompanied by an increase in legislative action focussed on supporting women and families, thus implying a positive feedback loop for gender equity (Kim, Lee and Park, 2025[112]; Gondal and Hatta, 2024[160]). However, female parliamentary representation, at 20%, is still relatively low, and does not yet represent a “critical mass” to consolidate women’s collective influence in shaping policies (often estimated to require around 30% of minimum female representation) (Karpowitz and Mendelberg, 2014[161]).
In addition to quotas, female political representation could further be strengthened through the provision of capacity-building on political leadership and campaigning skills, as well as access to campaign financing for female candidates running for election or public office (UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, 2024[115]).
While policies such as paid leave, affordable childcare, and access to flexible working can help support women’s access to paid work, further efforts are necessary to ensure women have equal opportunity to good work, good careers, and access to management and leadership positions. In 2020, the OECD undertook a stock-taking report of initiatives promoting female private sector leadership, in collaboration with the Private Sector Alliance for the Empowerment and Progression of Women’s Economic Representation (EMPOWER)1, see OECD (2020[159]). Underpinning this stocktake was a survey of EMPOWER members, highlighting initiatives undertaken by governments and firms, including efforts to improve accountability on gender equality targets, and the provision of education and training within firms. Selected examples, anonymised at the company level, are described below.
Improving accountability on gender equality targets
Canada: One media and technology company set up gender diversity targets and adopted ongoing tracking and measurement of its performance against these goals including gender pay gap, gender balance at all levels, gender balance at management levels, and execution of gender equity interviewing. This has proven to be a strong methodology in keeping the business accountable to its key performance indicators related to gender.
France: Several major companies from the finance, insurance, construction, telecommunications and cosmetics sectors set up gender diversity targets along with gender diversity indicators for key populations. Some of these companies have also started monitoring the allocation of remuneration between women and men with an indicator integrated into the annual remuneration review process for all functions. This has been accompanied by measures taken to anticipate possible gender pay gaps, as well as to correct existing unjustified pay gaps. In one major company from the insurance sector, where unjustified gender pay gaps were found, 2 422 corrective budgetary measures impacting 1 300 women were implemented, entailing an average salary increase of 4.77%.
Switzerland: Companies with at least 100 employees are obliged to carry out an internal wage equality analysis on a 4‑yearly basis. To support countries’ compliance efforts, the Federal Government provides a free of charge software tool (Logib) to companies, which calculates the level of wage equality in the company by regression analysis.
Education, training and mentoring
France: Leading companies from the financial, insurance and telecommunication sectors set up education, training and professional development for women in order to help them reach leadership positions through massive open online courses (MOOCs) as well as targets for women’s participation in talent programmes.
Germany: One major logistics and transportation company launched an MBA course in co‑operation with academia to strengthen the leadership skills and creative power of talent in the company. The proportion of women participating in the master’s programme is 50%.
Japan: Training programmes targeting male managers are widely provided in male‑dominated industries (including in finance, construction, consumer products and technology industries) to provide them with knowledge and managerial tips to better manage their female employees, including for instance on how to communicate their expectations, how to motivate them, and how to encourage them to seek career advancements with the appropriate support.
Spain: The Confederation of Employers’ Organisations (CEOE) launched the Promociona project in 2013, consisting of a comprehensive programme to strengthen the professional and leadership skills of women. By 2020, 834 managers from more than 600 companies have participated. As a result of its success, the Progresa initiative was launched in 2019 to provide high-potential women with the tools and skills necessary to advance their professional careers and assume high-responsibility positions in organisations in the future.
1. The EMPOWER alliance was launched at the 2019 G20 Summit in Osaka and convened for the first time under the Saudi Arabian Presidency of the G20 in 2020. It includes private and public sector representatives from 26 countries, including: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Mexico, the Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Türkiye, Rwanda, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States, as well as from the European Union.
Source: OECD (2020[159]), Policies and Practices to Promote Women in Leadership Roles in the Private Sector, https://doi.org/10.1787/60bb6113-en.
Continuing and expanding efforts to combat gender-based violence and harassment
While both men and women can be subjected to gender-based violence (GBV),20 the majority of GBV victims and survivors are women and girls. Most OECD countries report that violence against women is the most pressing gender equality issue they face (OECD, 2025[138]). The OECD has drawn from experiences and challenges in OECD countries to propose a three‑pillar approach for comprehensive and effective governance frameworks for combatting GBV (Figure 4.2), comprising:
The Systems Pillar grounded in inclusive, comprehensive GBV laws and policies that protect all victims/survivors. Effective implementation requires strong cross-government co‑ordination, clear delineation of roles and responsibilities for different state actors and non-governmental stakeholders, adequate funding, and regular review mechanisms;
The Governance and Service Culture Pillar which stresses the need for victim/survivor-centred services that reflect diverse needs. This includes integrated service delivery across health, justice, and social sectors, capacity building of service providers, GBV prevention efforts, and engaging men and boys to shift harmful gender attitudes and norms; and,
The Access to Justice and Accountability Pillar which focusses on ensuring access to justice for all victims/survivors and holding perpetrators accountable. Priorities include victim/survivor-responsive judicial processes, sanctioning and rehabilitating perpetrators, and tracking femicides/feminicides to address preventable failings and inadequate responses by the justice system.
Source: OECD (2021[152]), Eliminating Gender-based Violence: Governance and Survivor/Victim-centred Approaches, https://doi.org/10.1787/42121347-en.
The Korean Government has implemented a wide range of measures to combat gender-based violence and harassment, addressing aspects across all three pillars of the OECD GBV Governance Framework, with some of these efforts dating back decades. As a foundation for effective action to combat GBV, the OECD recommends the development of comprehensive, whole‑of-government strategies that cover primary prevention measures, risk assessment and management, protection/support to victims and survivors, and prosecution and punishment (OECD, 2023[139]). Korea is well-advanced in this direction, particularly since the establishment of the first Framework Act on Prevention of Violence against Women in 2019. The Act was developed in part in response to increased visibility and awareness of GBV in the wake of Korea’s #MeToo movement, with the purpose of bringing together previous separate efforts related to sexual violence, domestic violence, trafficking and other aspects of GBV for a more integrated response, as well as strengthening efforts to combat emerging GBV issues such as stalking, dating violence, and technology-facilitated violence and harassment (Government of Korea, 2024[132]). The Act mandates the development of 5‑year policy plans, and has led to new and strengthened efforts to combat GBV in Korea, including: enshrining the concept of “secondary victimisation”21 within the legal framework and providing relevant education for service providers and justice officials; collecting and publishing statistics on violence against women through the Fact-Finding Survey on Violence against Women (see previous section on Strengthening gender data quality and availability); enacting legal reforms to enhance protections for victim of domestic violence, stalking, and the online grooming of children and youth; and the introduction of preemptive and comprehensive measures to address digital sex crimes (Government of Korea, 2024[132]).
Victims and survivors of GBV have urgent and complex needs, meaning that different policy and service delivery actors – spanning health, housing, justice, employment, and education – need to work together in a seamless manner to provide integrated, person-centred, and trauma‑informed care (OECD, 2023[162]). Korea’s efforts in the provision of integrated protection and support for victims and survivors are particularly well-developed. For example, Korea’s approach for the provision of integrated, victim-centred care for sexual assault treatment and response (Sunflower Centers) was first launched in 2004 and has been recognised as a model for international good practice in this area by the UN Development Programme (UNDP, 2019[163]). More recently, Digital Sexual Crime Victim Support Centers, provide similarly integrated support services dedicated to online safety and victimisation (see Box 4.20).
Sunflower Centres
Korea first established its model for integrated care for victims/survivors of sexual assault, known as Sunflower Centres, in 2004, in response to an increasing awareness of the barriers for support posed by a previously highly fragmented reporting, treatment and response system. The Centres provide combined one‑stop access to counselling, medical treatment, psychiatric treatment, psychological evaluation and psychotherapy, legal advice and support in investigation and trial proceedings, emergency rescue services, forensic medical examination, and recording of victims’ statements in co‑operation with other specialised institutions and national police. There are three types of Sunflower Centres, respectively specialising in support for child and adolescent victims and their families; crisis response; and long-term integrated service delivery. As of 2024, there were 40 centres serving 23 000 victims/survivors every year across a national network. The “victim-first” integrated approach practiced by Sunflower Centres has provided a model for other countries looking to implement a similar system.
Advocacy Centres for Online Sexual Abuse Victims (ACOSAV)
More recently, to address the rising awareness and impact of digital sex crime and abuse, the Korean Government established the Advocacy Centre for Online Sexual Abuse Victims (ACOSAV) in 2018, accompanied by a regional network of 14 specialised counselling centres in 2021, in collaboration with other specialised victim support organisations. These centres support people who have suffered from non-consensual sharing of their intimate videos and photos, and other manifestations of online sexual abuse, and offer a comprehensive range of services to victims, including in-depth counselling, assistance with deleting illegal videos and photos, support during investigations, and referrals to legal and medical aid. In 2024, more than 10 000 people were supported by ACOSAV, up almost 15% from the previous year, with the vast majority of victims being teens or people in their twenties. In 2025 an amendment to the Sexual Violence Prevention and Victims Protection Act established the legal framework for the ACOSAV to be expanded into a nationwide victim support system.
Source: UNDP (2019[163]), “One-Stop Service Mechanism for GBV Survivors: Experience from Korea's Sunflower Centers”, https://www.undp.org/policy-centre/seoul/publications/sunflower-center-resource-book; Government of Korea (2024[132]), “National Review of Progress made by the Republic of Korea in the Implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action after 30 years”, https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/2024-09/b30_report_rok_en.pdf; Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (2025[164]), “Press Release: Over 10,000 supported by ACOSAV in 2024”, https://www.korea.net/Government/Briefing-Room/Press-Releases/view?articleId=710468&type=N&insttCode=A260114.
However, as in all OECD countries, more can be done to strengthen these efforts and tackle root causes. Drawing on OECD recommendations for effective GBV governance (OECD, 2023[139]) and Korea-specific observations of the UN Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, 2024[115]), some improvement opportunity areas for Korea include:
Continue to review, expand, and strengthen legal protection for victims and survivors of all forms of GBV. Korea has established widespread legal reform related to GBV and violence against women. Potential opportunity areas for further attention include:
Incorporating notions of consent in the legal definition of rape. More than half of OECD countries have adopted legislation defining rape based on the lack of free consent. This understanding of rape emphasises the importance of the voluntary nature of sexual acts (where involuntary sexual acts include intimate‑partner rape, rape perpetrated by an acquaintance of the victim/survivor or committed by a perpetrator of the same gender as the victim/survivor) and recognises situations where consent may be coercive or where the victim/survivor may be unable to give free consent (for instance, under the statutory age) (OECD, 2023[139]). However, the current definition of rape in Korean law (article 297 of the Penal Code) requires proof of “means of violence or intimidation” and is not explicitly based on the lack of affirmative consent (UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, 2024[115]). Reviewing legal protection of victims/survivors of intimate partner and domestic violence. The OECD recommends that member countries review laws on domestic violence to ensure that they cover all forms of abuse (including economic abuse which creates financial dependence which can make it even more difficult for women to leave abusive relationships) and ensure that family mediation options are not being inappropriately used to replace prosecution in domestic violence cases (OECD, 2023[139]). In Korea, domestic violence charges are dropped in cases where perpetrators undergo counselling. Efforts need to be made to ensure the safety of victims and their families as a priority, which may require a greater focus on prosecution over reconciliation and mediation (UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, 2024[115]).
Continue to improve legislation to combat and prevent technology-facilitated violence. The rise of technology-facilitated GBV is not unique to Korea, and is a rapidly-evolving area encompassing a wide range of threats and harms.22 As such there is a risk that current legislation does not cover all aspects of digital GBV (UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, 2024[115]). Children and adolescents, both girls and boys, are particularly at risk of harm both from digital sex crimes and cyber harassment and bullying. Digital risks to mental health, particularly for young people, have been explored earlier in this chapter, but it is also important to ensure adequate legal frameworks to prevent and respond to technology-facilitated GBV. Korea introduced a legal framework and policy package for eradicating digital sex crime in 2020 (Government of Korea, 2024[132]) and has a strong basis for responding to crimes once they have been committed and providing integrated victim/survivor support (see Box 4.20). One pathway for further improving legal frameworks is to introduce elements for stronger prevention of technology-facilitated GBV, particularly through legislation that emphasises the role and responsibilities of technology platforms. For example, the OECD Recommendation on Children in the Digital Environment highlights the importance of legal frameworks that include measures to promote responsible business conduct, and define conditions under which companies may be held liable for illegal activity or information-sharing on technology platforms (OECD, 2022[165]). A number of countries have incorporated a stronger regulatory stance on online safety, particularly for children, which could help prevent the prevalence of digital GBV for all ages (see Box 4.21).
A number of countries have implemented regulatory measures to improve online safety for children, preventing their exposure to harmful content (such as pornographic or violent imagery) or to inappropriate and dangerous interactions with other users. In Australia, France, Ireland and the United Kingdom regulators have taken action to ensure that children’s data is protected (for example through enforcing transparent consent processes for cookies and other data collection or tracking technologies). Parental consent is being requested in some countries, such as France, to ensure that children are accessing age‑appropriate content. In some countries, online safety regulation encompasses safety measures beyond childhood, to combat violence against women of all ages for example, including measures to directly control the type of content and activities platforms can host. Relevant examples from Australia and the United Kingdom are described below.
Australia’s Online Safety Act
Australia’s Online Safety Act was introduced in 2021 with the aim of strengthening existing legislation on online safety, including through measures to make online service providers more accountable for the safety of the people who use their service. The Act gives eSafety (Australia’s independent regulator for online safety) expanded powers to protect all Australians – adults as well as children – across most online platforms and forums where people can experience harm. The Act requires industry actors to develop and use codes and standards to classify online material, making it easier to identify, report and control seriously harmful material (such as videos showing sexual abuse of children) and age‑inappropriate material for children (such as high impact violence and nudity). The codes are accompanied by clear guidelines for companies to follow, including content moderation and reporting mechanisms, with the aim of protecting users. For example, they require major tech companies and other online services – such as cloud storage providers (e.g. Apple iCloud, Google Drive) and messaging platforms – to implement measures preventing misuse for harmful content distribution. The standards also address generative AI apps and marketplaces, including those used to create or manipulate images, ensuring safeguards against generating exploitative content, with non-compliance generating potential fines of up to AUD 49.5million per violation. This initiative not only impacts companies operating in Australia but also compels global compliance, marking a significant step in regulating harmful online practices worldwide. Alongside regulation, eSafety conducts complementary actions to prevent the prevalence of misogynistic actions and attitudes online, such as the “Stop it at the Start” which includes a counter-influencing campaign in online spaces where violent and misogynistic content is commonplace, to directly challenge the material in the spaces where they are being viewed.
The United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act
The UK’s Online Safety Act was established in 2023, and similarly to Australia’s Act, it puts a range of new duties on social media companies and search services, making them more responsible for their users’ safety on their platforms, including implementing systems and processes to prevent the use of platforms for illegal activity and to take down illegal content when it does appear. Codes also play a role in the UK framework, as under the Online Safety Act companies need to follow risk-based codes of practice produced by Ofcom (the UK’s communications regulator) or demonstrate that their approach is equally effective. Commitments and requirements of private actors are enforceable and come with fines and penalties for non-compliance. Child safety is a major focus of the Act, and tech platforms are required to design proportionate systems that protect children from encountering harmful content; mitigate and manage the risk of harm to children from features, functionalities or algorithms enabled by the design or operation of the service; use highly effective age verification and/or age estimation to prevent children from encountering “primary priority” content, such as pornography; and make terms of service easily accessible for children.
Additionally, the Act requires Ofcom to produce specific guidance for tech companies to uphold online safety for women and girls, which was released in February 2025 after widespread consultation with victims, survivors, women’s advocacy groups and safety experts. The guidance sets out ambitious but achievable measures that providers can implement to improve women’s and girls’ safety, encompassing:
1. Online misogyny: Content that actively encourages or cements misogynistic ideas or behaviours, including through the normalisation of sexual violence.
2. Pile‑ons and online harassment: When a woman or groups of women are targeted with abuse and threats of violence. Women in public life, including journalists and politicians, are often affected.
3. Online domestic abuse: The use of technology for coercive and controlling behaviour within an intimate relationship.
4. Intimate image abuse: The non-consensual sharing of intimate images – including those created with AI; as well as cyberflashing – sending explicit images to someone without their consent.
Ultimately, legislative action for preventing technology-facilitated violence is a moving target, given the rapid development of new platform capacities and new risks. Legislation, regulatory standards, and investigative processes will need to be reviewed on an ongoing basis to ensure adequate classification, coverage and response to emerging online risks. For example, in January 2024, a case in the United Kingdom involving a 16‑year‑old girl who was sexually assaulted by a group of strangers while wearing a VR device on a metaverse platform drew significant attention. This “metaverse group sexual assault” case was reported to have been officially investigated by British police, although no charges or prosecutions were made, as no actual physical harm occurred and the UK’s sexual offense laws define rape and sexual assault strictly in terms of physical contact. Identifying perpetrators in an anonymous online environment also posed significant challenges.
Sources: OECD (2025[89]), How’s Life for Children in the Digital Age?, https://doi.org/10.1787/0854b900-en; OECD (2024[166]), “Towards digital safety by design for children”, https://doi.org/10.1787/c167b650-en; Government of Australia (2024[167]), “Tackling online harms”, https://ministers.pmc.gov.au/gallagher/2024/tackling-online-harms; UK Government (2025[168]), “Online Safety Act: Explainer”, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-act-explainer/online-safety-act-explainer; Ofcom (2025[169]), “Ofcom calls on tech firms to make online world safer for women and girls”, https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/ofcom-calls-on-tech-firms-to-make-online-world-safer-for-women-and-girls; Jang, Y. and Youngmeen S. (2024[170]), “Cyber Sex Crimes Targeting Children and Adolescents in South Korea: Incidents and Legal Challenges”, https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13110596.
Raising public awareness of GBV, including intimate partner and domestic violence as part of broader GBV prevention strategies. Social norms that underpin a climate of tolerance and acceptance of domestic violence, including by women themselves, and insensitive or ineffective responses from law enforcement agencies can lead to under-reporting of domestic violence or intimate partner violence crimes (OECD, 2023[139]). Korea’s efforts to tackle secondary victimisation are an important step in improving survivor/victim’s experiences when reporting incidents of GBV, but societal tolerance of GBV is relatively high compared with other OECD countries.23 Public awareness-raising campaigns can help reduce tolerance of domestic and intimate partner violence, increase support for victims, and help encourage reporting of crimes (OECD, 2023[139]). For example, a social media campaign conducted by the Latvian Ministry of Welfare championing zero tolerance for GBV and domestic violence, and explaining how to file a report with the police, led to a 20% increase in the number of people applying for victim support and rehabilitation services between 2019 and 2021.24 School-based interventions can also play a part in preventing the development of harmful attitudes and negative behaviour leading to GBV (see Box 4.18).
Engaging men and boys to be part of the solution
Gender inequalities and gender stereotypes not only hurt women and girls, but also trap boys and men in socially-defined roles and forms of behaviour that harm themselves, as well as being detrimental to society overall. For example, studies in Mexico, the United States and the United Kingdom have found a link between restrictive norms of masculinity, such as the need to “act tough”, and increased prevalence of traffic accidents, sexual violence, and bullying and violence, as well as increased levels of suicide, depression, and binge drinking in men (Heilman et al., 2019[171]). Norms of masculinity preventing men from talking about their emotions are also linked with increased prevalence of male loneliness (Jones et al., 2023[172]). The need to engage men and boys directly in efforts to change restrictive or harmful attitudes on gender is increasingly being recognised (OECD, 2023[139]), and it especially important to do this at a young age: adolescents are strongly influenced by restrictive norms of masculinity, and this period represents a critical transition during which attitudes and behaviours are formed and targeted outreach can be impactful (Brüning, Matsumura and Thévenon, Forthcoming[173]). Box 4.18 presented some relevant school-based interventions in this regard, and Box 4.22 presents some further international good practice examples.
Emancipator, The Netherlands
Emancipator recognises that traditional gender discussions often overlook the role of men, and that harmful masculinity norms are frequently at the root of gender-based issues and works to shift societal expectations of men as a crucial step toward achieving gender justice. Through advocacy, capacity building, and knowledge sharing, Emancipator connects professionals, activists, and organisations to promote men’s emancipation from restrictive masculinities. The organisation supports stakeholders through tailored workshops, school and workplace training, collaborative projects, and thematic publications, acting as a catalyst for change at local, national, and international levels. Emancipator targets early adopters, namely individuals already engaged with gender justice, who can influence others in their networks. Their approach operates across all levels of society (individual, relational, organisational, community, and policy) and across a broad spectrum of issues linked to masculinities, including violence prevention, environmental responsibility, sexuality, and political participation (Emancipator, 2025[174]).
Shift: The Project to End Domestic Violence, Canada
Shift is an established non-profit focussed on combatting domestic violence. It has developed a number of principles it applies to reducing resistance and increasing engagement among men and boys, including those initially uninterested in gender equity or violence prevention, including: taking engagement efforts for men and boys to their everyday environments (such as workplaces, schools, sports clubs, and places of worship) rather than expecting them to join external programmes; building empathy by listening to men’s and boys’ priorities, fears, and concerns; targeting group dynamic to instil more sustainable behavioural change; train influential and trusted figures within a network to model new norms through everyday behaviours; focussing on behaviour not just attitudes; and framing skill-building around participants’ interests. For example, the ability to receive feedback from a coach or manager requires many of the same skills needed to reduce violence (e.g. self-regulation, managing thought distortions, active listening, and perspective‑taking); after trust has been established these transferable skills can be applied for a more effective engagement with gender-based violence and discrimination (Shift: The project to end domestic violence, 2025[175]).
Equimundo, Worldwide
Equimundo is a global advocate for the promotion of positive masculinities and has been successful in implementing evidence‑informed programmes that increased father’s involvement in childcare and household work, promoted gender-equitable decision between partners or parents, and reduced domestic violence both towards women and children. To ensure sustainable transformation, the Global Boyhood Initiative aims to deconstruct restrictive masculine norms at an early age, with a view to empowering both girls/women and boys/men (OECD, 2023[130]).
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← 1. The 4B movement (bihon, bichulsan, biyeonae, bisekseu) meaning the refusal of marriage, childbirth, romance, and sexual relationships is a similar form of social disengagement, from a feminist perspective (Lee and Jeong, 2021[183]).
← 2. A 2019 OECD review of Korean practice in this area made a number of recommendations to build on existing efforts including: Providing enhanced training for counsellors; adapting career counselling to the needs of disadvantaged youth; involving employers in career counselling; further expanding the Meister vocational school system; increasing the number and length of apprenticeship programmes available; reducing the costs of apprenticeships for employers; provide more entrepreneurship-related courses; and deepen efforts to provide training in competency-based hiring to companies (OECD, 2019[6]).
← 3. The adoption of the Act on the Prevention of Suicide and the Creation of Culture of Respect for Life (Suicide Prevention Act) in 2011 is seen to have been a major factor in the reversal of rising suicide trends at the time (Lee, Kawachi and Oh, 2024[176]). The Suicide Prevention Act led to the implementation of a wide range of prevention, pre‑crisis and post-crisis measures at national and local level including: The establishment of a nationwide network of suicide prevent centres; early detection, counselling, education, family support, and treatment for those at risk of or having attempted suicide; restriction of access to suicide methods, such as poisonous pesticides; public awareness campaigns; and “gatekeeper” training programmes to better prepare service professionals likely to be in contact with people with high suicide risk (such as health professionals) to provide effective preventative support (Lee, Kawachi and Oh, 2024[176]; Kim et al., 2019[177]). Together, these efforts cover most of the effective suicide prevention intervention methods identified in OECD research (OECD, 2021[29]). In addition, Korea has implemented a number of policies to reduce excessive drinking (a key risk factor for suicide and mental ill-health), although the social acceptability of binge drinking remains high in Korea (OECD, 2020[5]).
← 4. In the three European OECD countries for which data are available – Belgium, France, and the Netherlands – up to a quarter of young people reported having had suicidal ideation during the COVID‑19 crisis, which was five times higher than pre‑pandemic levels (OECD/European Union, 2022[184]). However, in most countries, this trend did not translate into an increase in deaths by suicide overall, or for young people specifically. In 2020 and 2021, death by suicide represented 11.2 deaths in 100 000 people, compared to 11.3 in 2018 and 11.1 in 2019, on average across OECD countries (OECD, 2025[70]). Overall, the trend of declining mental health for children and adolescents since the COVID‑19 pandemic is a global phenomenon, with the more pronounced deterioration for girls also evident in other OECD countries (OECD, 2025[77]).
← 5. While the 2011 Suicide Prevention Act and accompanying policy measures were effective at reducing suicide rates for men and women over 30 between 2011 and 2017, it did not lead to a reduction in the suicide rate for adolescents and young adults in their twenties (Lee, Kawachi and Oh, 2024[176]).
← 6. Social connectedness is a multifaceted concept with structural aspects (e.g. How much time do you spend with others? How many friends do you have?), functional aspects (e.g. What kind of emotional, material, or other kinds of support do you get from your connections, if any?), and quality aspects (e.g. Are your connections bringing primarily beneficial or harmful effects? Do you have very strong social connections, or are your relationships more superficial?) (OECD, 2025[38]) (Holt-Lunstad, Robles and Sbarra, 2017[186]).
← 7. Loneliness and social isolation are associated with many negative physical and mental health outcomes such as heart disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death – with effects comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day (Office of the U.S. Surgeon General, 2023[178]). They can also lead to negative economic, educational, and employment outcomes. In contrast, good social relationships can foster health, creativity, self-esteem, job satisfaction, co‑operative behaviours and even encourage social mobility and crime reduction (Mahoney et al., 2024[44]). National estimates of the economic cost of loneliness and isolation range from USD 400 billion annually for the US economy, 1.2% of annual GDP in Spain, and GBP 2 billion per year for employers in the United Kingdom (Mahoney et al., 2024[44]).
← 8. Directly comparable international data are not available but data from European OECD countries indicate that 1 in 10 11‑15 year‑olds reported having cyberbullied others in the previous couple of months in 2021-2022 (OECD, 2025[89]).
← 9. The gendered impact of different types of job insecurity was most starkly seen following the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the global financial crisis of 2008 respectively: The 1997 crisis, which mostly affected full-time permanent workers, saw a greater increase in male suicide rates, whereas the 2008 crisis, which affected precarious workers, led to a greater increase in female suicide rates (Moon and Haejoo, 2019[179]).
← 10. Although decreasing fertility rates, and shrinking birth cohorts may eventually lead to a situation where educational institutions, particularly in the private education sector, may need themselves to compete to attract students due to an overall reduction in demand in coming years (OECD, 2019[9]).
← 11. Social and emotional skills define how people relate to their inner and outer worlds including through task performance (persistence, responsibility, self-control and achievement motivation), emotional regulation (stress resistance, emotional control and optimism), engaging with others (assertiveness, sociability and energy), open-mindedness (curiosity, creativity and tolerance), and collaboration (empathy and trust) (OECD, 2024[84]). Most OECD countries have implemented some form of social and emotional learning component in their curricula and there is a growing body of evidence that social and emotional skills contribute to academic learning, are predictors of labour market and employment outcomes, and are associated with good health status (OECD, 2024[84]). Strong social and emotional skills can also help buffer the mental health impacts of traumatic or stressful events (such as the COVID‑19 pandemic) (Min et al., 2024[180]; Ciarrochi et al., 2003[181]) and reduce the likelihood of experiencing loneliness (Di Tella et al., 2023[182]).
← 12. Recognising the tendency for Korean people to be less likely to explicitly express their emotions and/or difficulties to others, a programme developed by the Korean Association for Suicide Prevention put an emphasis on seeing people and reading visual cues by looking at videos and role‑playing with all age groups. In 2013 from March to December alone, a total of 32 285 lay people completed this “See, Listen, Talk” course nationwide (McDaid, Hewlett and Park, 2017[97]).
← 13. The Constitution of the Republic of Korea, going back to 1946, declares that “No one should suffer discrimination based on their gender, religion, or social status in any part of their political, economic, social, and cultural lives”. It also guarantees equal opportunities in education, prohibits unfair discrimination against female workers, and ensures gender equality in marriage and family life (UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, 2022[187]). Since then, a wide range of gender equity policies and legislation have been enacted in Korea, and particularly in the last four decades since the establishment of the Equal Employment Act in 1987 (later renamed the Equal Employment Opportunity and Work-Family Balance Assistance Act) and the Framework Act on Women’s Development in 1995. The Women’s Development Act provided a legislative basis for achieving the equity principles enshrined in the Constitution and to guide policy action for improving women’s social status and equal access to opportunity across different sectors. It required that cross-government policy plans for supporting women’s development be re‑established every 5 years (Kim, 2011[188]). It was renamed to the Gender Equality Act in 2014, thus broadening the scope to enable action to address gender gaps and challenges for both men and women, while maintaining a focus on areas of particular vulnerability or challenge for women (Lee, 2015[189]).
← 14. As measured by responses to the question “How much tension, if any, would you say there is between […] in [country] today?”, with reference to different societal divisions including by gender, age, socio‑economic status, ethnic, and urban/rural location.
← 15. First emerging in the late 19th century as an effort to overcome patriarchal norms deeply embedded in politics and culture, the focus and objectives of Korean women’s organisations and social movements have evolved over time. For much of the 20th century, mobilisation for women’s rights took place predominantly within broader societal movements, such as collective resistance against the military dictatorship in the 1980s. Following democratisation in the 1990s, women’s movements began to enact change as much as from within the system as outside it, alongside concerted efforts to increase female political representation. Since the early 2000s, Korean women’s movements have increasingly advocated for intersectional rights for women of diverse sexual orientation, socio‑economic and migrant status, vulnerable female workers, women with disabilities and other vulnerable groups, reflecting the heterogeneity of Korean women’s status and needs (Hur, 2011[190]).
← 16. In Korea, conscripted military service is mandatory for men aged 18‑35 years. Conscription typically lasts between 18‑21 months depending on the type of military service. Women can participate in military service on a voluntary basis and represented 10.8% of serving personnel in 2024, meaning that military service is currently predominantly a male domain (Ellim, 2024[185]).
← 17. While much progress has been made in establishing legislation and legal frameworks to further gender equity, some laws still uphold gender divisions or utilise language with discriminatory implications. For example, although the traditional Hoju system (which placed the male head of the household at the centre of the family unit, and defined all other household members in relation to them) was formally abolished in 2008, some patrilineal principles favouring the male head of household persist in laws relating to property distribution on the dissolution of marriage (UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, 2024[115]). The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women has made additional recommendations to improve the legal basis for gender equity in Korea. These include improving legal protections and processes for family cases involving domestic violence such as removing any legal requirement for reconciliation and mediation in family cases with domestic violence, calling for members of the judiciary to receive mandatory training on the requirement to take domestic violence into account in child custody cases, and to give priority to prosecution over family reconciliation (UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, 2024[115]).The Committee additionally recommends that the Korean Government strengthen the economic protection of women in de facto unions living outside of formal marriage. Finally, the Committee also highlights the use of potentially discriminatory language in legal documents, for example recommending replacing “yeoja” in legislation when describing rights that are afforded to women, as it is frequently used to objectify women, with “yeosong”, which is used to advance women’s rights (UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, 2024[115]).
← 18. Analysis of the classroom and textbook content of Korean secondary education courses (middle and high school) from the 1980s show that qualities such as creativity and activity were reserved for boys, while purity, patience, and service were the areas emphasised for girls, meaning that patriarchal values were being further re‑enforced through the school system at that time (Ahn, 2011[111]).
← 19. See note 18.
← 20. Gender-based violence (GBV) covers different forms of physical, sexual, psychological, mental, emotional, and economic harm and is complex to define in a comprehensive manner. The Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (also known as the Istanbul Convention), a legally binding human rights treaty covering all forms of violence against women, refers to psychological violence, stalking, physical violence, sexual violence, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, forced abortion, forced sterilisation, sexual harassment, and “honour” crimes (acts of violence justified by culture, custom, religion, tradition or so-called “honour”). While the Istanbul Convention does not directly refer to technology-facilitated violence, it has been added to its Explanatory Report and to the Group of Experts on Action against Violence and Domestic Violence (GREVIO) General Recommendation No.1 on the digital dimension of violence against women. In this context, digital violence includes the use of computer systems to cause, facilitate, or threaten violence against individuals that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, psychological or economic harm or suffering (OECD, 2023[139]).
← 21. The Council of Europe defines this concept as follows: “Secondary victimisation occurs when the victim suffers further harm not as a direct result of the criminal act but due to the manner in which institutions and other individuals deal with the victim. Secondary victimisation may be caused, for instance, by repeated exposure of the victim to the perpetrator, repeated interrogation about the same facts, the use of inappropriate language or insensitive comments made by all those who come into contact with victims” (European Institute for Gender Equality, 2025[191]).
← 22. As previously referenced in note 22, technology-facilitated or digital violence includes the use of computer systems to cause, facilitate, or threaten violence against individuals that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, psychological or economic harm or suffering (OECD, 2023[139]). Examples of digital forms of GBV include cyberstalking, harassment, doxing and the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, and the proliferation of artificial intelligence‑generated sexually explicit media, deepfake videos, synthetic media and online pornography that commodify and objectify women’s bodies (UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, 2024[115]).
← 23. Amongst OECD countries, Korea has the highest prevalence of women aged 15‑49 years believing that a man is justified in beating his wife or partner under certain circumstances according to the latest World Values Survey data available from the 2017-2022 wave (41%, compared with an OECD average of 13.6%) (OECD, 2023[192]).
← 24. Service providers reported that 704 adult victims of violence had completed a social rehabilitation course in 2021, including 661 women and 43 men (compared with 583 in 2019, including 563 women and 21 men) (OECD, 2023[139]).