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South Korea's young generation flocks to Beijing for jobs

By Wu Jin: 0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, February 29, 2016

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Despite the successful and inspiring stories of their parental generation who climbed the social ladders from bottom to top, young people in South Korea have met with increasing difficulties getting jobs in their home country.

South Korea's young generation flocks to Beijing for jobs.[File photo]

Ji Eun, a 34-year-old South Korean citizen, has taught for eight years at a private kindergarten in Beijing.

With fluency in both Chinese and English, Eun possesses numerous merits, such as a strong academic background with her studies in both China and the United States, a demure look thanks to her low-key but appropriate dressing style and an amiable manner as she often bows to parents and children when greeting them.

Besides being a typical South Korean woman, Eun has everything but the plan to return to her home country regardless of the fact that the heavy smog in Beijing keeps her throat sore.

"Life in South Korea is more difficult and depressing than living with the sweeping smog in Beijing," said Eun. "It is hard for a graduate like me from the less prominent university in South Korea to get employed in my home country, where a job offer is as remote as the stars in the sky."

Competition in the job market in South Korea is fierce and only a few job vacancies are offered to the graduates with remarkable academic backgrounds, such as those who had been admitted to the top three South Korean Universities, namely, Seoul National University, Korean University and Yongsei University, before their postgraduate education in prominent overseas schools.

"My South Korean female friends usually get up at 5:00 am, exercise and dress up. They receive professional training in their spare time and accompany their bosses to drinks after work," Eun said. "Additionally, they need to pay attention to skin care and save money for plastic surgeries."

Suffering from the discrimination of their male colleagues, female employees in South Korea are often treated as inferior.

"I really miss my home, but when I look at the lives of my friends, I am less than willing to go back," Eun said.

The sluggish job market in South Korea has dampened many young people's fervor for love, marriage, new birth, friends and pride, said Wang Xiaoling, a deputy researcher from the Institute of Asia Pacific and Global Strategies of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Rapid growth of South Korea's national economy halted when the peninsula succumbed to the financial crisis in 1998. The job market is deteriorating as a result of the transformation and upgrade of domestic industries. The employment rates in the domestic market are capricious while the number of jobless graduates with higher education surges. In tackling these problems, the South Korean government and education administration have more than once encouraged young individuals in the country to look for opportunities abroad.

Patterns of life comprising the education from prominent universities, getting employed, getting married, borrowing loans to purchase houses and raising children were popular during the transitional period when numerous farmers were transformed into middle-class urban citizens in South Korea during the1970s.

However, 30 years later, the promising lifestyle came to an end due to the chilling signals sent from the domestic job market.

With a doctorate degree obtained from a U.S. university and working experience in Singapore and Hong Kong, Jae Seok got married at the age of 40. He was planning to buy the flat that he and his 38-year-old wife were renting. Although he married when he was ten years older than his parents were when they were married, he was considered lucky with his continuously employed status upon his graduation.

If any young individuals try to lead a life as successful as Seok's, they need to outperform him with stronger competence, Wang said.

Seok has a sister who is now 36 years old. Without securing a stable job like her brother, the young woman has travelled many countries with her boyfriend searching for temporary employment, spending all their savings.

"Since we cannot get a stable job, we can at least enjoy the freedom of life," the sister said.

However, she has been growing increasingly agitated in advance of her 40th birthday and expects to raise a child when they are able to settle down. With many sports training certificates and working experience as a Taekwondo trainer with an African country's national team, Seok is attempting to open a sports training class for children in Beijing.

The South Korean people have attached great importance to education as its middle-class has spared no pains in spending all their savings on the education of their children. However, the sluggish job market has resulted in prolonged education and the rising age of marriage. Additionally, as people are less capable of affordinga flat, rental prices are soaring to eat into the savings of young South Korean people who can only buy daily necessities after being charged by landlords. At the same time, the diminishing population, the bipolarization of social income and the declining consumption in the market has created a vicious circle affecting the recovery of the national economy.

Therefore, young people from middle-class families have painfully lowered their expectations for both jobs and quality of life.

Born into a middle-class family with her parents and paternal grandfather being professors, Hye Won was admitted to a prominent university in South Korea and passed the grade 8 HSK (Chinese language proficiency test) early. She studied English for one year in an American school and traveled to Japan for one-year language learning. She became an outstanding student and was admitted as a postgraduate candidate to China's prestigious Tsinghua University. However, she has grown to be anxious during her three-year study in Beijing and was even struck by an impulse to commit suicide.

Her depression is partly due to the heavy curriculum workload and loneliness she suffers in her life abroad, and is also partly due to her worries regarding her unclear career prospects. Her parents have constantly persuaded her to abort her efforts to become a professor as the competition in the sector is escalating, requiring an academic background from Ivy League universities and multitudes of SCI (Science Citation Index) papers.

According to Won, she hardly has the chance to lead a respectful life as her parents have done, as they made endeavors to become middle-class bare-handedly. Won abandoned her plan to continue her education in the United States and try to secure a job in Beijing so that she may get a decent job in South Korea with her overseas working experience.

Yeon Hak is a 30-year-old man born with a silver spoon in his mouth to a family of entrepreneurs. Hak's grandfather was the founder of a middle-size enterprise, while Hak's father is a banker. He traveled to both Hong Kong and Beijing for an internship and studies after finishing his academic education in the United States. Inspired by his grandfather's entrepreneurship, Hak is determined to be optimistic even though the temporary difficulties of South Korea's national economy may continue to affect his job opportunities.

Compared to the shrinking consumption and monopoly of national conglomerates, which have disabled the progress of startups, the real misfortune is the pessimistic mood that prevails among the younger generations, Hak said. He is about to develop his career from the beginning in Beijing.

"I'm happy to be a temporary resident in Beijing where I can incorporate my dream to the grand stage of the Chinese dream," he said.

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