The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors that are related to participation and obstacles of the life-long learning. Data came for the OECD ALL(Adult Literacy and Life-skills) survey with 5,506 adults of 16-65 years olds. 11.1% of Korean adults participated in formal and non-formal learning and 51.0% of them participated in informal learning. The relatively low participation rates indicates that we still have many barriers keeping adults from participating in learning activities. 13.5% of respondents answered that there were programs and courses that they failed to take in the last year even though they wanted to. The reason for not participating in life-long learning was time constraint(79.2%), money(38.6%), and housekeeping or child care(37.6%). The results of logistic regression shows that the younger and the more educated people tend to learn more and the less educated and the poor people have low possibility of participating in continuing education. The need for encouraging the learning of the minorities was underlined.