- South Korean young adults aged 15 to 34 who remained economically “inactive” rather than seeking employment reached 590,000 in 2024, an increase of 197,000 from 2019, according to a report released by the state-run Korea Employment Information Service on March 23.
If you do anything outside the expected path (either by bad luck or because you don’t qyite fit in) and you don’t have rich parents, you fall out of the wagon and no employer will let you back in, so why keep begging at job interviews only to just sell your life away anyway…happens in Japan and Europe too.
I’m wondering how much of this is lie the beatniks and the hippies: groups that existed but had an outsized influence, mainly by being anti-heroes to their contemporaries.
Expected late stage capitalism distopia
Akira aged like a fine wine
Kinda a happy story with community and people looking out for each other.
adults aged 15
Not sure I can agree with that, but otherwise none of this is surprising. It’s a dystopian, capitalist shithole like most modern countries are.
When the dream goes from being a turn of phrase to an accurate description of attainability, it’s no shock that some folks just say fuck it. We’re seeing it show up in a lot of places under various names but it ends out being the same generalized thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule#Quiet_quitting
I feel this is going to become more and more common across the world.
That’s especially concerning because South Korea’s population is aging at an extremely rapid rate, and they need what incoming workforce they have to be participating.
They had a TFR of 0.75 in 2024. A woman was averaging having three-quarters of a kid in her lifetime. A level necessary to sustain the population is about 2.1.
Kurzgesagt: South Korea is Over
Good for them.
Geez, I wonder why
