Seoul will make school arrival and departure notifications free for every elementary student in the city beginning in September 2026, covering roughly 320,000 children across 607 national, public, and private schools. The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education announced the rollout on August 26, framing it as a universal educational welfare measure that also strengthens child safety. Funding will come from the Ministry of Education’s Disaster and Safety Management Special Grant, allowing the service to operate at no cost to families or schools.
Until now, access depended on each school’s adoption and on household budgets. As of December 2025, 429 of Seoul’s 606 elementary schools—about 70.8 percent—offered similar services, typically requiring families to pay 2,200 to 3,300 won per month per student. Citywide free access removes these fees and extends availability to schools that had not implemented the program.
The system pairs a student-carried device with a relay station installed on campus. When a child enters or leaves the relay’s detection zone, the platform automatically sends a text message or app notification to the guardian’s phone. The design is intended to help parents, including those in dual-income households, confirm school arrival and departure in real time.
Officials emphasize what the service is and is not. It confirms entry and exit events at school; it is not a GPS tracker that maps a child’s full commute outside school grounds. As such, it cannot by itself prevent all incidents that could occur off campus.
Public support for universal free access is strong. In a consultation conducted from April 29 to May 10 on the government’s online policy platform, 4,653 of 4,802 respondents (96.9 percent) favored full subsidy. A large majority, 87.4 percent, cited the ability to quickly verify a child’s status as a likely contribution to accident prevention.
The initiative aligns with the central government’s comprehensive child commuting safety plan released in November 2025 by multiple ministries, including the Interior and Safety Ministry, the National Police Agency, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Health and Welfare. That plan targets blind spots along school routes by expanding child protection zones, adding CCTV coverage, deploying AI-assisted video monitoring, and applying crime prevention through environmental design.
Ahead of the September launch, the education office is coordinating with schools on onboarding procedures, distributing student devices, and converting existing paid users to the free system. Backup devices will be supported, and schools will notify families of enrollment steps through letters and other channels.
After implementation, officials plan field checks and user feedback collection to resolve operational issues such as students forgetting devices, recognition errors, or notification delays. Superintendent Jeong Geun-sik has framed the effort as a core responsibility of education authorities: ensuring every guardian can reliably verify a child’s arrival at and departure from school, regardless of a family’s ability to pay.
