Lee Hyo

Early September, with the heat not yet gone. There are already 12th-grade students who have entered the final stretch of the second semester. For seniors at specialized high schools, time flows not by the November college entrance exam but by the October start of on-site practicums. Those assigned to a practicum company sit in class counting down to their first day at work. Standing on the threshold of an uncertain entry into society as ‘practicum students', their feelings mingle between anticipation and a sense of bleakness.

Bae Jung-ho, head of KakaoBank's Foreign Customer Camp, speaks during a press conference in Seoul, Monday. Courtesy of KakaoBank

Seoul stocks have been tanking since mid-June, when the bullish market took a sharp turn as investors rushed to dump shares of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix amid growing concerns over the sustainability of Big Tech companies’ unprecedented...

Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) CEO Chang Min-young, eighth from left, poses with the bank's executives and Vietnamese officials during the launch ceremony for IBK Vietnam Bank in Hanoi, Tuesday. Courtesy of IBK

Marriage comes with a profit-and-loss statement. “A good job or a wealthy family”(Lee Su-hyun·34·alias), “No money, but a strong academic pedigree, so buy the dip”(Kim Kyung-ho·32·alias), and so on. In the minds of young people contemplating marriage, addition and subtraction race back and forth.

From left, KB Kookmin Bank CEO Lee Hwan-ju, Shinhan Bank CEO Jung Sang-hyuk, Hana Bank CEO Lee Ho-seoung, Woori Bank CEO Jung Jin-wan and NH NongHyup

Hyundai Engineering & Construction (E&C) headquarters in Seoul / Courtesy of Hyundai E&C

Choi Min-seok (28, a pseudonym) waits for heavy snow. When his mountainous hometown is blanketed in white, he gets on construction heavy equipment and makes a loop around the neighborhood. When he pulls up stranded cars, the people who had their foreheads on the steering wheel thank him over and over. His face brightened as he recalled those days. “It made me think I, too, have a use.” He also operates heavy machinery on construction sites, but has rarely felt a sense of reward. He has been telling himself for years now, “I will do this only this year and then quit.”

Even when they drink alone, young people who do not want to be alone these days go to solo-drinking bars. Even Jecheon in North Chungcheong Province, a city of 120,000 that young people are leaving, has a solo-drinking bar. It is not the kind of place, like the recently trendy solo-drinking bars, with a U-shaped table that naturally fosters conversation. Still, there are young people in Jecheon who need a solo-drinking bar, and this place has become theirs.

Professor Cho Eun-Ju of Jeonbuk National University's Department of Sociology then asked, “Can we feel that we belong to the same society?”