South Korea’s 2024 Time Use Survey

Korean time diaries make household labor and care visible without confusing measured gender gaps with explanations of institutional power. Who spends time on employment, care and maintaining everyday life cannot be answered through an impression of busyness alone. Statistics Korea’s 2024 Time Use Survey results, released on 28 July 2025, approach daily divisions through activity diaries. The official introduction identifies 12,750 sampled households and around 25,000 members aged ten and over. The population is neither employed people only nor mothers only.

The denominator changes the meaning

The release distinguishes average time across everyone, the proportion participating in an activity, and average time among participants. Including people who perform no housework produces a different measure from averaging only those who do it. Identifying the measure comes before selecting the largest gender or household difference.

Diaries record activities in ten-minute intervals and classify personal maintenance, obligations and leisure. Categories enable comparison but also establish boundaries. A main-activity diary does not automatically encompass simultaneous care, or fully register responsibility for remembering, planning and responding to emergencies.

A narrowing gap is not equal responsibility

Within its discussion of households with minor children, the briefing reports a narrower housework-time gap between dual-earner spouses than in the previous wave. Narrowing does not establish equality or prove that changing attitudes alone explain it. Employment hours, public provision, household composition and purchased substitutes can all affect arrangements.

Comparisons of single-parent and two-parent households also complicate a household average. Not everyone has another adult with whom to negotiate. Single mothers provide an important test of whether employment, care and rest policies fit together, rather than a story that stands in for all women. Satisfaction and fatigue are separate indicators; activity time cannot substitute for subjective experience.

The observed year is 2024 and the release year 2025. Comparison with 2019 does not track the same people. The survey describes allocation without independently identifying a policy’s causal effect, and Korean figures cannot represent other countries.

Haicault’s research reveals coordinating responsibility, while Carrasco’s argument asks why market schedules become fixed conditions. Together they distinguish measured time, organizational work and institutional priorities.