Low-paid, female-dominated workforce faces chronic shortages, robot replacements remain limited
Photos show school lunches at Sekyeong High School in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, designed by former school nutritionist Kim Min-gi. (Kim Min-gi’s Instagram account)
Behind South Korea’s widely praised school lunch system lies a growing crisis: chronic labor shortages rooted in low pay, physically demanding work and serious health risks.
Images of 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 fueled protests by workers mourning colleagues who died from workplace-related illnesses, and mounting vacancies are beginning to threaten the quality and stability 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 skilled human labor.
School kitchen workers protest in front of Cheong Wa Dae in central Seoul on April 23 over deaths linked to occupational diseases. (Yonhap)
As of March last year, the number of school kitchen workers nationwide was about 4 percent below the official quota of 44,000, a shortfall seen as the beginning of a broader exodus as vacancies continue to rise.
According to Rep. Jung Hye-kyung of the Jinbo Party, 3,198 workers, or 60.4 percent 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 percent short of openings last year, while some major cities saw much larger gaps despite high demand. Seoul and Ulsan recorded shortfall rates of 84.5 percent and 45.8 percent, respectively.
Behind the shortage are harsh working conditions and relatively low pay. Workers face significant health risks while earning a base salary of just over 2 million won ($1,400) per month. Many are also not paid during summer and winter vacations.
School employees serve lunch to students and a teacher at a school in South Jeolla Province. (South Jeolla Province)
Each worker is responsible for meals for around 200 students and teachers, handling everything from ingredient preparation and cooking to serving and cleanup.
“Among 15 workers in our kitchen, only four have more than a year of experience, as most leave within two to three years,” said Lee Gap-suk, a school kitchen worker in Seoul with 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 recognized 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.
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-gu faced strong 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.
A photo from a public middle school website shows an allegedly inadequate school lunch served in Seocho-gu, Seoul, in 2024. (Screenshot from the school website)
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 finalized until 2027, raising concerns that improvements may come too late to stabilize the 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 labor shortage and improved ventilation systems to reduce exposure to cooking fumes. But skepticism remains.
Some workers say current robot technology is not advanced enough to meaningfully reduce workloads. Machines also cost more than 100 million won each and add maintenance burdens.
“Robots can handle ready-to-cook frozen fried products, but such processed foods are rarely used in school lunches,” 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 percent had been completed as of the end of last year.
Nationwide, the rate stands at 41 percent.
Rep. Ko Min-jung (center) of the ruling Democratic Party speaks during a press conference at the National Assembly in Seoul on April 22, calling on the government to recognize lung cancer among school kitchen workers as an occupational disease. (Yonhap)
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 robots are not yet practical on the ground, 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 labor. 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 standardized processed meals, making trained kitchen workers central to the system.
“Ultimately, this is about budget priorities within education authorities,” said 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.”
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