What’s stopping South Korean students from getting exercise?

Recent governmental data revealed little improvement in the amount of physical activity South Korean teenagers were getting, with long study hours taking priority over outdoor activities.

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency looked at the share of students who engaged in at least an hour of physical activity for five or more days a week — a standard used by the World Health Organization.

The analysis, released Monday, found just 17.3 percent of teenagers met the standard in 2024. By gender, the rate among teenage boys was 25.1 percent, with the rate for girls at just 8.9 percent.

Though 2024’s numbers showed a slight increase compared to 2023, the level of physical activity among Korean students remains much lower than in other countries.

According to the KDCA, as of 2024, the physical activity rate among Korean high school students was 13.4 percent, 32.9 percentage points lower than that of high school students in the US.

Kang Jae-heon, a family medicine professor at Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, told The Korea Herald that students engage in less physical activity than teenagers in other countries due to the long study hours here.

“Even kids nowadays in Korea engage in less physical activity as they are pushed to study ahead of the school curriculum. This only gets more intense as these children enter middle school, high school, as study hours get undoubtedly longer,” said Kang.

“As students spend most of their time sitting down, studying, going to and from school, cram school and their homes, they find that there’s little to no time to squeeze in physical activity.”

Kang also pointed out that there is a “subtle cultural perception” that physical activity is “a waste of time” in Korea, especially among students.

“There isn’t necessarily a direct belief that exercise is bad, but physical activity is definitely deprioritized compared to academics, especially during middle and high school years,” continued Kang.

“Physical education classes are judged as resting classes or as classes to get easy grades rather than something important for the students’ health and development. They’re also not as emphasized in student evaluations or university admissions compared to academic subjects. This can lead to fitness or health being sidelined when it comes to academic excellence.”

This is not the only set of data showing Korean students to be relatively inactive. As of 2023, only 23.6 percent of Korean students reported engaging in muscle-strengthening exercises — such as pushups and pullups — in at least three days of the past week.

This number represents less than half of the rate of students based in the US in the same time period, which stood at 51.1 percent, according to the governmental agency.

Additionally, according to a 2016 analysis published every 15 years by the World Health Organization, among 146 surveyed countries, 94.2 percent of Koreans aged 13 to 18 were classified as physically inactive, the highest such rate in the world. The WHO recommends adolescents engage in at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day.

Family medicine professor Cho Soo-hyun from Chung-Ang University Hospital told The Korea Herald that a more “movement-friendly school culture” needs to be established to “encourage more students to keep moving.”

“Increasing the physical activity rate is not just important in terms of the students’ physical health, but also for their mental health and academic performance,” said Cho. “Ironically, while students sit still to study more, their academic performance may actually suffer from not moving enough, as physical movement is also a vital part of sharpening focus and memory.”