It is welcome news that the country’s conglomerates have recently come up with plans to help increase youth employment.

Samsung, the largest business group in Korea, has announced a plan to provide 30,000 young people with jobs or job training over the next two years. Hanwha and Lotte have promised to hire 17,569 and 24,000 workers by 2017 and 2018, respectively. SK plans to help 20,000 youths begin their own businesses and offer job training to 4,000 others for two years starting in 2016.

Their moves come in response to President Park Geun-hye’s calls for greater efforts to reduce the country’s worsening youth unemployment. Park met with the heads of 17 conglomerates last month to ask them to help settle the problem. In her Aug. 6 statement on key policy agenda to be pursued during the latter half of her five-year term, Park reemphasized the urgent need to create more jobs for young people.

According to government data, the youth unemployment rate stood at an average 10 percent in the first seven months of this year, up from 9 percent a year earlier. Experts estimate that Korea’s actual youth jobless rate, which includes those who have given up on looking for a job, hovers around 23 percent.

The increasing number of jobless young people is posing severe problems that threaten to cripple Korean society and economy. With more than 1.1 million youths left unemployed now, the country can hardly be expected to usher in a brighter future.

In the eyes of some critics, the conglomerates may seem to be moving to ease the pain of jobless young people only after being pressured to by the president. True, they had paid little heed to the criticism that they were sitting on large amounts of cash reserves without making sufficient efforts to create more jobs until Park’s repeated requests.

It is still meaningful that large corporations are assuming more active roles to increase youth employment. What is important is that they should follow through on their plans. They are giving the impression of trying to ingratiate themselves with Park by concentrating on hiring and offering job training to young people over the couple of years until the end of her tenure.

But increasing youth employment is certain to remain a top priority for the next government. Conglomerates need to show their sincerity toward helping more youngsters gain jobs by pushing for longer-term plans. Needless to say, it depends on managerial judgment to decide on the optimal level of recruitment. Still, it should be perceived that leaving many youths unemployed will undermine the country’s growth potential and thus hamper corporate activities.

The government and lawmakers need to do their part by helping forge favorable business conditions so that corporations may expand investment and employ more workers. Regulations should be abolished drastically and bills designed to reinvigorate the economy, including one that aims to boost the service sector, should be passed through parliament as early as possible.

There is also the need to narrow the gap between large corporations and small firms in pay and other working conditions to get more young people to join the workforce.