Finding work is also difficult in Korea, especially for younger people. If private companies and the State hire little and work languishes, the twenty-thirty-year-old South Koreans have not been discouraged and have organized themselves: the winning answer, in fact, seems to be self-employment.
In 2014 in South Korea, for the first time since 2002, the number of employed people between 20 and 30 years of age increased considerably: looking closely at the data, however, the increase is not due to a recovery in hiring , but to a growth of autonomous activities. Those who then manage to find subordinate work are often forced to accept temporary and part-time jobs, even if they want a stable and full-time job: precarious work, according to statistics, affects three out of ten young people who start an employment relationship.
According to Lee Hee-woo, an official of IDG Ventures Korea, “it is plain for all to see that large companies fire, without a second thought, an ever-increasing number of their employees. Faced with such a spectacle, young graduates opting to start their own work are on the increase. The trend is catching on, so much so that universities and other institutions are competing to offer support to these new start-ups".
Twenty-year-olds certainly do not lack enthusiasm and new ideas and, notes Hwang Soo-kyung of the Korea Development Institute, "young people are also the most creative, the most ready to explore new business sectors: those who are a few years older when they open a one's business is generally limited to cafés or restaurants”.
At the Korea Development Institute, however, not everyone is thrilled with the new course. “The venture business boom among young people is a positive trend, but let's be careful not to overestimate it,” warns Yoo Kyung-jun “that's certainly not the way to solve the unemployment problem. What is really needed is a fair and correct world of work, which eliminates the current discrimination of precarious workers compared to permanent ones”.
