without family, without home and without children

In an essay published in La Civiltà Cattolica, Jesuit Jeong Yeon Hwang analyzes the crisis that young people are experiencing and which is reflected in the collapse of the birth rate. Extreme competition at school causes “burnout and isolation.” But for 94.8%, the future they imagine “can be achieved” and 95.7% recognize that relationships have a “priority” role.

Milan () – South Korea is experiencing “a very cold demographic winter”, according to the expression coined by Pope Francis to describe the low birth rate, with a provisional figure for 2022 of 0.78, which drops to 0.72 for 2023, and then continues to fall to 0.68 according to estimates for 2024. But what are the deep reasons for this phenomenon? And what does the demographic crisis say about young Koreans today? Father Jeong Yeon Hwang SJ addresses this topic in the latest issue of the magazine La Civiltà Cattolica and tries to understand in depth what is called “Opo generation” (in Korean, the generation of the “five no”), that of those who today seem to give up on relating to a person, getting married, having children, owning a house and have a professional career.

Seoul has proposed financial incentives, cash prizes, childcare subsidies and reimbursements for infertility treatments. However, the fall in the birth rate is a trend that has worsened and is approaching a historical minimum “unprecedented in the modern era worldwide.” Some of the triggering factors would be job insecurity, poor accessibility to housing, the high cost of living that is reflected in raising children, and a culture that is not family-friendly in the workplace.

But to the financial difficulties is added the growing competitiveness, first in the educational field and then in the labor and social field, which is called “credentialism” and is based on university degrees and certifications accredited by the government for high-income professions, such as doctors and lawyers. These titles are synonymous with a high status that fuels competition from childhood and continues through the different stages of growth, through adolescence and into adulthood. Proof of this is the fact that before entering university, around 80% of students attend “hagwon”, private tutoring institutions for those preparing to enter high schools or the most prestigious universities. In Seoul alone there are more than 24,000, a figure much higher than that of minimarkets.

On the one hand, South Korea is one of the countries with the highest education rate in the world, with approximately 88% of women and 83% of men between 19 and 34 years old graduating or attending university. However, there is unemployment in the country and it is not easy to buy a home, factors that force young adults to delay marriage plans and, very often, to give up on starting a family. The data reflect the crisis: the age at which women – for whom it is increasingly difficult to reconcile marriage, raising children and a working career – get married has risen from 26.5 years in 2000 to 31, 2 in 2022, while the percentage of single “for life” rose from 5% in 2013 to 14% in 2023.

The analysis also shows an increase in “gender polarization” in young people aged 20 to 35 that has had an impact on the 2022 elections: 75.1% of men aged 18 to 29 supported a conservative candidate, while that 67% of women of the same age group expressed a preference for a progressive. This translates into “resistance” among men to policies aimed at improving women’s rights, to the point that the wage gap between men and women in 2022 was 31.2%, the highest among countries. of the OECD. On average, women earn much less than their male colleagues and female representation in politics is just 19%, one of the lowest in the OECD.

There are also significant differences when it comes to marriage and children. Among unmarried young adults, 75.3% plan to do so in the future, with a difference of 10.1 points between men and women (79.8% men, 69.7% women). 63.3% plan to have children in the future, and here the difference between men and women is 15.2 points (70.5% men, 55.3% women). Young women and men – the article observes – live in competition and have diametrically opposed political opinions and different attitudes about marriage and family.

Young adults are subjected from a young age to constant pressure in the race for success, with the risk of “burnout and isolation.” According to a 2022 survey, 33.9% of young adults had experienced it in the last year due to career-related insecurity (37.6%), work overload (21.1%), skepticism regarding work (14.0%) or the imbalance between private and work life (12.4%). In addition to the risk of burnout or exhaustion, South Korea has one of the lowest scores in social relationships: 21.5% of this group of people declare that they do not have “friends or family to turn to in case of need”, very above the average of 10.1%, and the risk of social isolation is high.

However, even in such a competitive society, young people do not lose their vitality: 94.8% are convinced that the imagined future is somehow “attainable” and 95.7% recognize that they have a role in their lives. “priority” relationships with positive people. That is why young people do not stop cultivating dreams of happiness and love and the desire for solidarity and union grows – observes Fr. Jeong Yeon Hwang – “founded on a shared vision and giving the strength to make it a reality.”