[In-Depth Look] A Single Ghost Is Wandering the Presidential Election Scene

In 2013, I overcame a 60-to-1 competition rate among lawyers and joined a major corporation as an in-house counsel. Five in-house counsel positions were open, and 300 lawyers applied. After passing document screening, the first practical interview, a native English speaker interview, and the second executive interview, I was offered a one-year contract position with the possibility of conversion to a full-time deputy manager role, along with an annual salary of several tens of millions of won. Having graduated from a prestigious university and law school, I thought the offered conditions were modest considering the fierce competition, but I could endure it. At that time, the sale price of a newly built 32-pyeong apartment in the last new town near the headquarters of that major corporation in Seoul was about 300 million won. If I spent less and saved diligently, I could hold onto the hope of purchasing it. Loans were also readily available then.

Only eight years have passed since then. The 20-somethings who were freshmen in college in 2013 have now either studied abroad, pursued graduate school, completed military service, or started working, just becoming young adults in society. The apartment that cost about 300 million won back then has increased more than fivefold during that period. Meanwhile, the starting salaries for young people have remained stagnant. The days when they dreamed of owning a home have become a distant memory.

The older generation does not understand the anger of the 2030 generation. Over the past eight years, their own asset values have increased by at least one billion won while they remain oblivious to the pain and anger of young people who must start with nothing. These people bring in a few YouTubers or a handful of silver spoon youths who inherited their parents' wealth and smile patronizingly, claiming to empathize with the MZ generation (Millennials + Generation Z) and youth. Even I, who have just emerged from the initial tunnel of life that young people must endure, do not fully understand the lives of youths starting out in industrial areas without subways in provincial regions, yet countless clumsy prescriptions are being recklessly issued by those who claim to represent young people’s lives.

No one truly understands the meaning of a total fertility rate of 0.81. Young people are engaging in a kind of social strike that goes against human instincts, yet the government oddly tries to encourage childbirth by handing out a few subsidies and offering one year of parental leave. There are clear causes such as job and housing instability, but instead of addressing these issues, the government deceives the public by implementing welfare policies based on populist budgets that only apply to stable jobs in large corporations, pretending that this will solve the low birthrate problem.

A ghost is wandering through South Korea’s presidential election landscape. This ghost, called the 2030 generation by some and the MZ generation by others, cannot entrust its dreams and future to any candidate and drifts aimlessly through the election season. No one properly addresses their concerns; instead, they seek these youths’ votes through easy tricks like dividing men and women. As election day approaches, these wandering ghosts will resign themselves to settling somewhere, thinking, "Well, elections are about choosing the lesser evil, not the best." However, I fear that the world these ghosts?who are entirely rejected by the reality of South Korea?desire will never come. It is certain that we will all soon pay the price for rejecting their legitimate demands.

Sangsoo Park, Vice President of the Korean Bar Association

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.