Police are moving to ease the "24-hour 30 kph limit" now applied in child protection zones (school zones). The plan is to adjust speed limits flexibly during times when few children are on the streets, such as late at night or on holidays.
According to police and others on the 19th, the Korean National Police Agency recently commissioned the Korea Road Traffic Authority (KOROAD) to conduct a study on improving speed limits in school zones. The study will run through June, and the results will be submitted to the government's "National Normalization Project task force (TF)."
Recently, delivery drivers on dawn routes and taxi drivers have noted that "uniformly restricting speeds late at night and even on holidays, when there is almost no child traffic, is excessive." The 30 kph limit in school zones has been in place since 2011.
Since September 2023, the Korean National Police Agency has implemented a "time-based speed limit" in some school zones that raises the limit to 40–50 kph from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. the next day. However, only 78 out of roughly 16,000 school zones nationwide have adopted the time-based limit, prompting calls for expansion.
The discussion also aligns with pledges in politics. The Democratic Party of Korea previously proposed a flexible approach to ease school zone limits to 50 kph during late-night hours (12 a.m.–5 a.m.) as a pledge for the June 3 local elections.
The relaxation of speed limits is expected to be possible without a separate amendment to the Road Traffic Act. Still, some are concerned that pedestrian accidents involving children can occur even late at night or on holidays.