Are the "Youth on Break" really bad people?

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■ 73.6% of all young people resting ( 쉬었음 youth) have prior work experience. What does this indicate? Why aren't young people who've had jobs going back to work? Kim (32) complained: "The character-assassinating verbal abuse from my previous boss was seriously intense, and even though I vowed to let it go in one ear and out the other, the internal damage was deep." He added, "There were tons of problems like unpaid overtime, but since it was a workplace with less than 5 people, it was hard to get legal protection." He expressed his hope that his next job would at least be somewhere within the bounds of the law. Yoon (30) also said, "It's 2025, and there are still so many supervisors who treat you like an emotional trash can and hurl insults." He continued, "Companies with structure at least have discipline or warnings for people like that, but in companies with poor HR management, it’s mostly just 'suck it up.' They even gave me the side-eye when I had to go to the hospital, so I just started hating the concept of having a job." Jeon Sung-shin, head of the youth group 'NEET Lifers,' analyzed: "In most cases, young people who transition from resting to becoming NEETs don't try to find a job, or hesitate, not because they think it will be hard to go back to a company, but because of the anxiety of repeating a bad experience like the last time." This suggests that 'disappointment from the previous job' is creating more 'resting youth' than the act of employment itself.

On the 25th, the Hankook Ilbo analyzed microdata (MDIS) from the Statistics Korea Economically Active Population Survey and found that 82% (560,991 people) of the 683,894 young people (aged 15–39) resting last month had quit a previous job and lost the desire to look for new work. The number of those who had prior jobs was 4.6 times higher than those who started resting without ever being employed. Statistics Korea classifies the youth aged 15–29 as 'resting youth,' which tallied 395,600 last month. However, this report included those in their 30s in the analysis, given the rising age for entering their first job and the clear increase in resting youth during what should be their most economically active period.

First off, most of the 'resting youth' have previous work experience. According to the 'Economic Outlook Report' published by the Bank of Korea in December last year, as of 2024, nearly 400,000 resting youth (aged 25-34) had prior employment experience, while less than 50,000 had none. 71.8% of the increase in resting youth stopped working for non-voluntary reasons. This suggests that it's not fair to lump all these resting youth together and condemn them as people who 'don't even try and just loaf around.'

Instead of those lazy 'resting youth' who get constantly roasted on [community boards], there are actually way more young people who worked, got burnt out, and ended up needing a break.