Survey data shows most Koreans call their parents once a week or more. (123rf)
Survey data shows most Koreans call their parents once a week or more. (123rf)

We all mean to call our parents more often, but let’s be honest, life quite often gets in the way. So how often do Koreans actually pick up the phone to check in on their parents?

A nationwide survey of 7,499 households in South Korea, conducted by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, found that 44.4 percent of respondents live apart from their parents. Among them, the median number of phone calls made to parents over the past year was 52, which works out about once a week. That might sound pretty reasonable, even reassuring, for anyone wondering if they’re keeping in touch often enough.

But here’s the twist: The mean average number of calls was much higher — 106 a year, or roughly once every three or four days. That’s more than double the median.

Since the median represents the value in the middle when all responses are lined up in order, this finding suggests that while a typical Korean might call their parents about once a week, a smaller group makes significantly more calls — enough to raise the overall average.

The average of 106 calls per year also happens to correlate with income — those earning more call less often. Low-income households averaged 95 calls per year.

In-person visits told a slightly different story.

Families reported a median of 12 visits a year, with an average of 42. Low-income households saw their parents more often, but the gap was smaller than for phone calls, at 46 visits a year on average, compared with 42 for general-income households.

But the researchers pointed out that many poorer households were not very tight-knit.

“Low-income families tended to have more frequent face-to-face contact with parents,” the research team said. “But among low-income households, the differences were large, which means some visited much more or much less frequently than others.”

The Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs has been conducting this survey every year since 2006 to track family life, living conditions, and welfare needs across different groups.


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