A millennial couple who moved to South Korea says $400 a month for full-time childcare is a huge perk

Chris Oberman said he and his wife were pleasantly surprised by South Korea’s “really cheap” childcare costs.

About 10 months ago, Chris Oberman and his wife welcomed their first child together. They’re learning how to be parents in an unfamiliar environment, but there’s one thing that could work in their favor: low childcare costs.

Since 2019, the couple and their two cats have lived in five cities across four countries. Oberman’s wife, who preferred her name be excluded for privacy reasons, has a government job that requires them to move every few years.

They started their journey by moving from the Netherlands —Oberman’s home country — to Beijing, Shanghai, and Erbil, Iraq. They lived in each place for about two years each. The couple then moved to Seoul, South Korea, about two months ago, where they currently reside.

From a financial perspective, Oberman’s early impression of Seoul was that groceries and housing were “quite expensive.” He said they expect to pay between $4,500 and $5,000 a month for a three-to-four-bedroom home with an outdoor space — they’re living in a hotel in the meantime. However, there’s one important cost that appears to be quite affordable: childcare.

The couple found a full-time day care option — five days a week from 9-to-5 — that charges roughly the equivalent of $406 a month for children less than one year old, according to a document provided to B-17. That number declines to $357 a month for one-year-olds and $296 for two-year-olds. In the US, the average annual cost of childcare for one child was over $11,000 in 2023 — or about $965 a month — according to the advocacy organization Child Care Aware.

“Full-time day care is really cheap,” the 38-year-old told B-17 via email. He said their son will start day care in October on a part-time basis.

High childcare costs in the US are making it harder for some families to pay the bills, resulting in some women dropping out of the workforce, and are among the reasons some couples have decided to postpone or forego having children. Between 1983 and 2023, US childcare costs rose over 800% compared to a 300% increase for overall inflation, according to a B-17 analysis published last year.

But not every country’s childcare is quite this expensive.

A Bank of America report published in February found that among 30 developed countries analyzed, South Korea had the 5th most affordable childcare costs — the US and the Netherlands came in 29th and 22nd respectively. Bank of America used OECD data to estimate the average childcare costs for a couple with two children in a given country and compared this to the average combined wages for a couple with the same profile.

To be sure, childcare isn’t the only cost associated with having children. A report published in February by a Beijing think tank found that when it comes to the total cost of raising children to age 18, China is the only country that is more expensive than South Korea. Pressure to enroll children in expensive programs like music classes and tutoring lessons are among the factors that have pushed up child-rearing costs in cities like Seoul.

These costs are among the reasons many people in South Korea are choosing not to have kids — the country has the lowest birth rate in the world. Over the past two decades, the South Korean government has invested billions of dollars in an effort to entice people to have kids — including a childcare subsidy. However, many people in the country, in part for financial reasons, still aren’t having children.

While Oberman’s day care costs are “quite cheap” in his estimation, he said South Korea’s low birth rate has forced some day care centers to close due to insufficient demand— resulting in some long waitlists for the remaining centers.

“We got pretty lucky that we didn’t have to wait too long,” he said.

While Oberman has heard that raising children in South Korea gets more expensive as they get older, he said that by the time this happens, there’s a good chance his family will have moved to another country.

“We only have to deal with day care,” he said.