A clear majority of young South Koreans expect their country to be in worse shape two decades from now, according to a new government survey that lays bare a generational gap in how Koreans see the future.
The survey, conducted by the Ministry of Planning and Budget, found that 61.6 percent of people aged 19 to 34 believe the country will be worse off in 20 years. Among the general public the figure was far lower, at 43.4 percent, a gap of nearly twenty points between the young and everyone else.
A generation braced for decline
The pessimism deepens when the question turns to hope. Only 12.6 percent of young respondents said they expected the country to improve, against 28.9 percent of the general public. For many under 35, in other words, the default expectation is not progress but slippage.
The ministry ran the web-based survey for a week starting June 23, polling 1,000 members of the general public aged 19 and older alongside 500 young adults, and released the results on July 29. The design lets the government read the mood of the young against the country as a whole.
Jobs and housing at the root
Ask what worries them most and the generations diverge. Among young respondents, 36.4 percent pointed to job instability as their leading source of anxiety, while the general public was likelier to name the burden of housing and living costs, cited by 24 percent.
Housing weighs on both groups, but harder on the young. Some 27.8 percent of young respondents named it the country's biggest problem, against 25.7 percent of the general public, a reminder that the cost of a home sits near the center of the generational complaint.
Different fears, different fixes
The two groups even diverge on what the government should chase. Young Koreans were most likely to want the state to prioritize economic growth and competitiveness, chosen by 31.6 percent, while the general public leaned toward stable lives and well-being, picked by 27.2 percent. The young, it seems, want the engine restarted more than they want a safety net.
On one point they largely agree. Demographic change loomed as the greatest source of future uncertainty for both, cited by 47.8 percent of the general public and 43.8 percent of the young, a shared unease about a country growing older and fewer.
A government listening, or claiming to
The minister overseeing the exercise, Park Hong-geun, framed it as an attempt to widen who gets a say. Future strategy, he said, should not be determined unilaterally by the government, and should instead take in the perspectives of the public.
Whether that consultation changes policy is another matter. What the numbers make plain is the scale of the task, that the generation the country is counting on to carry it forward is, by a wide margin, the one that expects the future to be worse.