Can South Korea’s praised school lunches keep their trays full?

SEOUL – Behind South Korea’s widely praised school lunch system lies a growing crisis: chronic labour shortages rooted in low pay, physically demanding work and serious health risks.

Images of South Korean school meals regularly circulate online, showing metal trays filled with diverse, nutritionist-planned dishes. The meals are often held up as an example of the country’s universal school lunch system, which provides free meals to students.

But harsh conditions in school kitchens have fuelled protests by workers mourning colleagues who died from workplace-related illnesses, and mounting vacancies are beginning to threaten the quality and reliability of school meals.

Education authorities are promoting robots and ventilation upgrades as part of the solution. But workers say the impact of automation remains limited, and improvements have been slow.

They argue that better staffing and safer working conditions are among the few measures that can quickly reduce work-related illnesses and prevent further erosion of the system, since preparing diverse school meals still depends heavily on human labour.

Labour shortage worsens

As at March 2025, the number of school kitchen workers nationwide was about 4 per cent below the official quota of 44,000, a shortfall seen as the beginning of a broader exodus as vacancies continue to rise.

According to Representative Jung Hye-kyung of the Jinbo Party, 3,198 workers, or 60.4 per cent of those who left between January and November 2024, quit before reaching retirement age. Many left within six months of starting work.

The vacancies have been difficult to fill. Applications fell 29 per cent short of openings in 2025, while some major cities saw much larger gaps despite high demand. Seoul and Ulsan recorded shortfall rates of 84.5 per cent and 45.8 per cent, respectively.

Harsh working conditions and low pay are the main drivers of the staff shortage. Workers face significant health risks while earning a base salary of just over 2 million won (S$1,740) per month. Many are also not paid during summer and winter vacations.

Each worker is responsible for feeding around 200 students and teachers, handling everything from ingredient preparation and cooking to serving and clean-up.

“Among 15 workers in our kitchen, only four have more than a year of experience, as most leave within two to three years,” said school kitchen worker Lee Gap-suk, who works in Seoul and has seven years of experience.

“We serve too many students, but there is little time to build teamwork because people do not stay long.”

Health risks have made the job even harder to endure. Exposure to cooking fumes, particularly from frying, has been linked to serious respiratory illnesses, sometimes fatal.

Since 2021, 178 cases of lung cancer among school kitchen workers have been recognised as occupational diseases, with an incidence rate more than five times higher than that of other occupations.

Most recently, a woman who had worked in a school kitchen for seven years died of lung cancer on April 18 while pursuing a lawsuit after her claim was rejected.

Slow fixes

The worker shortfall is already taking a toll on meal quality and increasing the physical burden on remaining staff.

A public middle school in Seoul’s affluent Seocho district faced complaints after reducing the number of side dishes, as just two workers were responsible for preparing meals for more than 1,000 students in 2024.

In response, the government has proposed measures to ease the burden on school meal workers.

One measure is setting standards for the number of students per worker, following revisions to the School Meals Act in January. But the standards are not expected to be finalised until 2027, raising concerns that improvements may come too late for the current workforce.

Workers say urgent action is needed to halt the outflow, warning that excessive workloads and early resignations are weakening training and increasing the burden on those who remain.

The government is also exploring technological solutions, including frying robots to ease the labour shortage and improved ventilation systems to reduce exposure to cooking fumes. But workers say current robot technology is not advanced enough to meaningfully reduce workloads.

The machines also cost more than 100 million won each and add to kitchens’ maintenance costs.

“Robots can handle ready-to-cook frozen fried products, but such processed foods are rarely used in school lunches,” kitchen worker Lee said. “So workers still have to bread, coat and fry food by hand.”

Ventilation improvements are also lagging. In 2023, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education aimed to fully upgrade school kitchens by 2027, but only about 12 per cent had been completed as of the end of 2025.

Nationwide, the rate stands at 41 per cent.

Workers call for staffing, safety upgrades

Workers and experts are calling on the government to speed up improvements in working conditions to ensure stable school meals for students.

“At a time when using robots is not yet practical, there is a view from the field that it would be better to allocate budgets to ventilation improvements or hiring additional staff,” said an official from a union representing non-regular school workers under the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions.

Medical experts say increased staffing could reduce exposure to cooking fumes by lengthening intervals between frying duties and easing physical strain in kitchens.

They say it could also indirectly lower accident risks by reducing the pressure on workers preparing large quantities of food before students arrive for lunch.

Experts also stress the need to change perceptions of the job, which has long been regarded as low-skilled labour. Such views, they say, have contributed to slow improvements.

School meals provide essential nutrition to students by offering a diverse range of dishes rather than relying on standardised processed meals, making trained kitchen workers central to the system.

“Ultimately, this is about budget priorities within education authorities,” said Mr Lee Byoung-hoon, professor emeritus of sociology at Chung-Ang University.

“Improving conditions for school meal workers can be sufficiently funded if it takes precedence over spending on unnecessary facility upgrades and other ancillary costs.” THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK