Fewer than eight in 10 students entering middle school in South Korea this year had completed all required vaccinations, health authorities said.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency and the Ministry of Education said on the 22nd that the full vaccination rate among middle school entrants stood at 77.2% as of May 31, down 2.2 percentage points from a year earlier, according to the results of the 2026 Vaccination Verification Program for Elementary and Middle School Entrants. The rate for elementary school entrants was 92.0%, down 0.1 percentage point from the previous year.
For middle school students, the program checks the tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis vaccine (Tdap) or the tetanus-diphtheria vaccine (Td), as well as the Japanese encephalitis vaccine. For female students, it also includes the first dose of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. By vaccine, the rate for the sixth dose of Tdap or Td fell to 87.2% this year from 89.7% a year earlier, a drop of 2.5 percentage points. The first HPV dose among female students declined to 78.6% from 80.3%, down 1.7 percentage points. The Japanese encephalitis vaccine, by contrast, rose to 88.0% from 86.2%, up 1.8 percentage points.
Elementary school entrants maintained relatively high rates. The rate for the fifth dose of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine (DTaP) was 97.0%, the fourth dose of the polio vaccine (IPV) 97.9%, the second dose of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR) 98.1% and the Japanese encephalitis vaccine 93.5%. The full vaccination rate for students who received all four dipped to 92.0% this year from 92.1% a year earlier.
The KDCA attributed this year's lower final rates to vaccination levels that were already below last year's when students entered school. Still, between March and May, when schools and local governments identified unvaccinated students and encouraged them to get their shots, full vaccination rates rose 8.6 percentage points for elementary entrants and 12.5 percentage points for middle school entrants. The gain for middle school students was 3.2 percentage points larger than the 9.3-point increase over the same period last year. The first HPV dose rate in particular climbed 13.8 percentage points during the verification period, exceeding the 9.5-point gain recorded a year earlier.
The program covered 301,931 elementary school entrants and 418,951 middle school entrants this year. The KDCA and the education ministry urged students who have not completed their required vaccinations to visit a nearby designated medical institution before the end of the year, consult a physician and finish the shots.
