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Apart from kimchi, K-pop, and sadly, North Korea, Korea's vigorous and often unhealthy focus on education is well known worldwide.
Koreans believe a solid educational background, including acceptance into a top-ranked university, will ensure access to gainful employment and successful lives.
On paper, there is not much difference between the Korean and American ideals of hard work equaling success.
But in both cases, the ideal and the reality are not so compatible. It is true that in both countries, completion of tertiary education increases the overall chances of gainful employment and a much higher salary over a lifetime. The accumulation of wealth is markedly better for people with degrees than those with no education beyond high school.
The U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in the fiscal year of 2014, unemployment for those with just a high school diploma stood at 6 percent, while those with a bachelor's degree was 3.5 percent, and those with a master's degree was 2.5 percent. Further, high school graduates earned about $670 a week. Those with a bachelor's degree earned more than $1,100 a week.
However, in the aftermath of the Great Recession, and in the economic stagnation of China (a very important trading partner of Korea), the promise of a good life after university is more muddled. In Korea, older workers are retiring later in life. Jobs with stability and basic benefits are becoming less the norm, particularly for those just recently entering the workforce.
In fact, 2015 has seen the highest level of educated, unemployed young people (21-29 years old) since 2000 ― a whopping 410,000 people. Moreover, 34.8 percent of young Koreans aged 15-29 are in contractual positions. Over one-third of these young people may not have a job next year, and 19.6 percent of them have contracts lasting less than a year.
Worse, to pay for the crushing financial burden of private education, college exam preparation, and then university tuition, along with basic housing and food, Korean families' household debt compared to GDP is one of the worst ratios of any emerging market economy, at 84 percent of GDP.
All Korean debt ― private, public, and personal ― is a breathtaking 228 percent of GDP.
American college graduate debt is more than $1 trillion. This debt is so high that for the first time in modern American history, college graduates may not be able to achieve a standard of living better than or equal to that of their parents.
In both Korea and America, university tuition costs far outstrip inflation.
The American job market, although healing, is offering less-stable work with fewer benefits and less pay, making college graduates' ability to find gainful and long-term employment more daunting. Coupled with this is the ever-present and heavy burden of student loan repayment, not to mention transport, food, and housing.
This is why a lot of young American graduates are beginning to look more like their Korean counterparts of similar age and education: staying at home long after finishing college, and an even longer delay in getting married, or forgoing marriage altogether.
To be fair, the Park Administration has not been sitting by idly. A dedicated taskforce, more than $1 billion in funding, and a lot of policy initiatives have been focused on helping young Koreans find employment. Unfortunately, these measures have proven ineffective.
In Korea and the U.S., the reasons for this new reality were long in the making. Whether from the 1997 fiscal crisis in Asia for Korea, or the Great Recession and tax policy compounded over decades in the U.S., companies have shifted to contractual employment to defer costs.
Instead of reinvesting revenue accrued from ever-increasing tax cuts into employment, the private sector has invested the money into stock buybacks, better compensation for executives, or kept profits offshore in tax havens like Ireland. (Apple and GE, or General Electric, are probably two of the most famous American firms to employ these tactics).
One day, hopefully soon, Korean and American policy makers will get over the fantasy that tax cuts spur economic growth. Companies and wealthy people already have money. The money saved from less taxation does not flow back and trickle down to the unwashed masses ― it stays concentrated at the top. More than 30 years of empirical data under multiple American, Republican administrations, including more recent state experiments in voodoo conservative economic theory, bears this out.
Beyond tax reform, decreasing the tuition burden for college students, increasing grants(not loans) for students entering college, and encouraging better wages and stable working conditions via government incentives may all help brighten the outlook for young people who have followed the Korean/American mantra of working hard and following the rules.
Increasingly, the educated young in both countries have less and less to show for it.
Deauwand Myers holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.com.
