By Choi Sung-jin
Nine out of 10 young workers and college students feel empathy with the new coinage “Hell Joseon,” meaning they feel that their country is like a hellish version of the medieval feudal kingdom, a recent survey shows.
In a survey of 1,800 office workers and 1,300 university students by Job Korea, a job-seeking portal, workers in their 20s sympathize with the term the most, with 90.7 percent, closely followed by 30-something workers with 90.6 percent and college students with 90.5 percent.
However, the group who responded with “agree strongly” toward the term is highest among workers (39.3 percent) and those in their 30s (39.2 percent), the survey reveals.
The survey shows that people in their 50s sympathize the least with the term, with only 24.1 percent agreeing with it at all.
As to why the respondents who agree to the term do so, 60.4 percent cite the gap between the haves and have-nots or the imbalance of wealth, as shown by the “spoon theory,” which postulates that people are born with one of four different spoons in their mouths -- gold, silver, bronze and dirt. The second-most cited reason is the difficulty people have in landing jobs (57.7 percent) – high unemployment and low job security. Following the top two reasons are high inflation and economic hardship (37.0 percent), never-ceasing competition (36.1 percent), and tightened circumstances of life (28.5 percent).
By group, 66.3 percent of college students cite the job crunch as the foremost reason they agree to the term, followed by the competition for grades and jobs (54.7 percent) and wealth imbalance (41.3 percent) while office workers most frequently point to wealth imbalance (74.9 percent) as well as the job crisis (51.3 percent) and economic difficulties (41.2 percent).
Particularly, 93.7 percent of respondents over 50 who sympathize with the term, cite wealth inequity as the main reason for relating to Hell Joseon, showing a hefty gap of 54.5 percentage points between them and a comparable share of people in their 20s (39.2 percent) who feel the same way. On the other hand, while 55.1 percent of 20-something respondents point to institutionalized competition as the main reason they agree to the term, only 20.6 percent of their 50-something counterparts feel that way, a difference of 34.5 percentage points.
Those who responded that they don't relate to Hell Joseon cited as reasons the high level of domestic security compared with other countries (37.9 percent) and the good medical care available in the nation (35.4 percent). Other reasons include the overall living environment and economic standards (28.2 percent), sufficient opportunities (27.9 percent) and the realization of democracy in respecting individual freedom (20.7 percent), the survey shows.