| Sumario: | Purpose A growing number of robots are developed and trialed for elderly care services in South Korea. Among them is Hyodol, a toy robot for the elderly living alone. Since the product's market release in 2017, almost 6,000 units have been distributed nationwide, known to be the most widespread elderly care robot in South Korea. In particular, over 90 percent of the robots have been distributed through healthcare institutions with public funding, which demonstrates the potential of information and communication technologies (ICT) successfully being incorporated into the state-run welfare system. While Hyodol's therapeutic efficacy has been investigated by a number of scholars (Jo et al., 2019; Kim et al., 2020a; Kim et al., 2020b; Lee et al., 2019), less focus has been placed on cases in which the robotic care does not operate as expected. This study aims to address and characterize the barriers that hinder the seamless introduction and sustainable use of robots. Method This study is based on multi-sited ethnography of Hyodol. For over 18 months, we have attended as participant observers at various events including robot training sessions for caregivers, robot installation at older adults' houses, robot repair and maintenance, and meetings among institution managers. In addition, we had in-depth interviews with stakeholders including the company staff, institution managers, caregivers, and older adults using Hyodol. Either semi-structured or unstructured interviews were conducted according to the interview subjects and settings. After the data was collected, the reported problems were grouped thematically. Results and Discussion Our results show that sustainable use of Hyodol is impeded by multiple problems involving technological, operational, financial, and institutional and policy issues. This demonstrates that the effect of care robots is determined not only by technology acceptance of the older adults and how much the robot is technologically advanced. Rather, it is dependent on sociocultural context and the existing eldercare ecology in which the robots are put into. For example, robots are usually not purchased by individual older adults but introduced as a municipal project with a two-year fiscal budget plan in Korea. This bureaucratic management system puts robotic care in a precarious position after the initial financial support. Furthermore, the quality of the robotic care is contingent upon the mediators between the older adults and the robot (Shin and Jeon, 2018; Jeon et al., 2020) that are in charge of managing and checking the app/web monitoring system. By pointing out the need for a dynamic and situated understanding of robots and their uses, this study contributes to developing culturally robust robots (Sabanovic et al., 2014) and designing sustainable robotic eldercare services.
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