Burgeoning young leisure class may be harmful to social stab

Burgeoning young leisure class may be harmful to social stability

Any working person who took a day off and walked one of the ritzy parts of Seoul may have wondered about it. There are too many young women and men in their early- and mid-twenties on the streets doing nothing but socializing at pricey restaurants and elegant clothiers.


Some of them may be college students, while some others may be workers at nearby office buildings. But it is not hard to imagine that a significant portion of them are those unemployed after recent college graduation.


The 1997 currency crisis and an ensuing era of austerity changed the hiring practice of large companies for good. They no longer announce annual recruiting plans for college graduates who could, in the past, get a decent job with relative ease. Regardless of whether the applicant had necessary job skills, anyone with a degree from, say, any of the top-20 colleges could be hired and start climbing up the corporate ladder. But that's not true any more.


Now companies require specific job skills. Instead of responding to such changes, the young army of would-be workers gives up on the job search in the first place. While their aspirations are high, the world can't offer them what they want.


In many cases, they opt to live the life of a 'perpetual student' preparing for state exams or some promising license exams, which is nothing other than 'disguised unemployment.'


These young unemployed are seen in many places such as American-style restaurants where a meal costs $50 for two. They fill up the movie theaters and shopping malls. They wear brand clothing and shoes, flashing the latest-model cell phones all the time. No wonder TV commercials and other marketing efforts focus almost exclusively on that very group, featuring teenage or early-twenties celebrities.


How can they afford all this? The answer is surprisingly simple. Their parents endow them with generous allowances. It may be a uniquely Asian phenomenon, permitting children to rely on their parents' money until in their late twenties or even early thirties. They are, in a sense, a new leisure class living off of someone else's money.


But what if, for some reason, the youngsters suddenly realize they can no longer expect hefty allowances and free room and board from their parents? Or what if their number has grown so great that the economy cannot support them any longer? It could be a serious source of concern that could cause major instability in our society.


Other than tight family ties in Asia, looking into the matter more closely may reveal another factor. One of the hypothetical conclusions is that the biggest culprit in this waste of human resources on a massive scale is how students are taught in colleges.


Although much has changed since a few years ago, instructors and academic courses still overly emphasize a liberal arts education. True, philosophy and history classes are important for a person's internal growth that would last for the rest of a lifetime. But such learning doesn't bring home the bread. Colleges need to go through a fundamental reform in which the curriculum reflects the changes in our society and economy, and in which the students learn requisite skills necessary to survive in today's world.

One way to do so would be bringing in as many experts in respective business fields as possible to teach the kids how the real world really works, instead of ramming a 1,000-page economics book into their faces. Expanding internships in partnership with willing corporations would be a good way to make them street smart.


Some day, we may not see as many young unemployed arrayed in the latest fashion trends roaming the streets as we see today, but only if we are successful in getting them to learn marketable skills.