The older generation has many complaints about today’s youth. Nine out of 10 young men and women in the subway are glued to their smartphone screens, texting with friends or engrossed in video games. Their attire -- girls’ short pants almost invisible between their blouses and sandals and boys’ flat-bill caps and long shorts -- lacks character. Their facial contour overlaps with plastic surgery posters. 

Yet, we are genuinely sorry for them. Born in the era of economic prosperity, they are entering their prime in what seems to be the end of the golden age. While we expect the young people to fight their way through the social jungle to reach their goals of life, general weariness is detected instead of youthful vigor. “Conditions were not easy in our days too, yet we were at least not afraid of starting a family,” the old father grumbles to his children still unmarried in their late thirties. But marriage is low on their list of problems.

They primarily suffer from job scarcity, which is not their own fault. And there are too many absurdities that discourage the young generation as they step into the real world after years of tough competitions among peers through educational stages up to college. In the past, collegians also had individual difficulties but they shared one goal -- democratic development -- that looked attainable if only they endured the clouds of tear gas and police violence in demonstrations. Fortunately, industries were growing to give them optimism.

The gloom around us includes the forecast that for the first time in many years, per capita GDP is about to record negative growth in 2015 under complex causes. Crazy politics has completely forgotten the practice of “bipartisan agreement” in legislation and pointless rows continue over the state intelligence organization’s purchase of hacking programs from a private overseas group. Scams in the purchase of sophisticated arms are exposed almost every week.

Now the economy is at a standstill. Big companies, the coveted places of work, are often engaged in family feuds to grab management control. The ongoing siblings’ fight at the Lotte Group based in Korea and Japan is turning uglier day by day. Samsung and Hyundai are now relatively calm as they had internal disputes a little earlier. And unproven competence of the third- and fourth-generation owners of conglomerates adds to the uncertainty of Korean economy and poses the problem of unearned wealth that continues to grow in this country.

The situation is getting harsher for the young men and women in Korea. The unemployment rate of the 15-29 years old group was officially 10.2 percent last month but it may be truer to say that one out of every three young people we meet on Seoul streets is unemployed and one of the two employed is an “irregular” worker. It is a little better than Greece but Korea could be trekking the old European nation’s path with people more concerned with distribution than production.

I recently read a shocking article written by a freelance writer for a monthly magazine. In her reportage in the August edition of the Shindonga Monthly, a sister publication of the daily Dong-a Ilbo, Yoo Sul-hee exposed what she called “Hell Joseon (Korea) syndrome” spreading in the youth society of Korea. She titled her story as “This hellish country, give me a bamboo spear!” quoting a catchword used by an online protesters’ group.

The Hell Joseon debaters online divide Korean society into five classes by their economic status, according to Yoo’s observation. They are “gold spoon” on the top, “silver spoon,” “bronze spoon,” “earth spoon,” and “waste spoon” at the bottom. The division derives from the old saying describing a child from superrich families as “born with a golden spoon in their mouth.”

One blogger summarizes Korean society as follows: “The gold spooner goes to an English kindergarten while the waste spooner is beaten up at a children’s house. A gold spooner takes training in foreign language during high school while a waste spooner spends time at a PC room. … A gold spooner parachutes into a high-paying job whereas a waste spooner keeps making “folder phone” (90 degree) salutes to interviewers at one company after another. A gold spooner enjoys retirement by going on overseas trips while a waste spooner spends his (her) last years in a tiny windowless room.”

Emigration is the answer to the frustration and despair of the young generation. “We have done what the state and the established society asked us to do from high school to college, but we got nothing. This country is hell to the waste spoon persons,” another Internet user speaks out. Surveys showed one out of three young Korean employees were preparing or had once prepared for emigration.

The scary “bamboo spear” metaphor seems to be connected to the suicidal trend in the paranoid youths who meet at Internet suicide sites and discuss the ultimate choice. The bamboo spear used to be the arms of peasant rebels in history but the despaired youths today are not making it themselves. They are asking others to give it to them so that they can thrust it at each other, not at society as a whole. The Hell Korea syndrome is appalling but it still sounds like a cry for help.

There still is the chance of turning their negative emotions to positive energy if only opportunities are offered to them by the established society, such as unions and enterprises. There are signs that Korea faces stagnancy after the dashing decades of “dynamic Korea” when everything was measured by “growth rate.” But a new takeoff is possible with our great asset of educated workforce in abundance. It is a time for readjustment to new realities through accommodation between sectors and generations.

President Park Geun-hye is doing her part to give them hope but her appeals to industrialists to create more jobs have yet to produce results. Ahn Cheol-su who had once emerged as an alternative torchbearer for the youths has disappointed many with his unprepared foray into politics. We need true leaders who listen carefully to what the youths have to say, understand their woes and talk them into rising from despair. We all should try to keep them from abandoning their young dreams.

By Kim Myong-sik

Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer for The Korea Herald. – Ed.