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Permalink Reply by Steven S. Bammel on October 8, 2010 at 3:10pm

Very interesting article! Thanks.

I find the link between demographics and employment to explain a lot in Korean society. For example, with the aging population we find that Korea is importing more labor for factories and such. This leads to more multicultural families which, combined with the women who are immigrating to marry rural Korean men, is leading to social change and a tremendous amount of recent coverage in the Korean press about multi-cultural families and society. Going forward, as this trend continues due to demographics and the need to fill positions, the commonly accepted homogeneity of Korea may come to be questioned.

I felt that the article didn't tackle adequately the challenge college graduates are apparently having to get jobs. I don't understand the situation perfectly, but the difficulty getting a job is apparently a huge deal for kids in their mid-20s. I was at a meeting last week with a combination of young people and older folks and the speaker mentioned something about how a certain trend was going to lead to jobs for young people and then asked rhetorically whether the college students in the group thought this would be a good thing or not. The yells of approval from the kids was remarkably robust, with cheers even coming from the hallways around the meeting room. Obviously, someone is concerned about getting a good job and starting their career. I don't understand how this can be the case though... Korean college graduates are better qualified than they've ever been and Korean business is doing fine indeed!

Permalink Reply by Mike Park on December 7, 2010 at 8:45pm

This is an excellent report which points out the huge gap between reality and what government wants to capture. In the United States the unemployment rate uses mostly typically the U3 definition - so when you hear 9.8% US unemployment rate in the newspaper this is the U3 definition (most common). However, if you look up the U6 (proposed/defined by the ILO: International Labor Organization) unemployment rate for the US, this U6 figure has recently approached 20%.

South Korea's 4~5% unemployment rate (periodically issued by the R.O.K. Statistics Bureau) is basically useless for modern day application/perspective - and a non-intuitive view of the labor market.

As Rob points out well, the system needs to be "upgraded" in a major way (or supplemented) to reflect what is happening on the streets of Seoul and all across South Korea. In other words, the methodology (formula) is not in alignment with what you & I (majority of people) feel should be incorporated. In order to hear news about a more near-to-home statistic, it would be useful to see South Korea's equivalent to a U6 unemployment figure. So, I hope journalists and people in the right places can seek to release U6-like unemployment rates for Korea to better capture labor market activities.