South Korea's 'overworked' millennials choose YouTube over Samsung
Yoon now runs a YouTube channel about pursuing dream jobs and is supporting himself from his savings
SEONGNAM - Yoon Chang-hyun s parents told him to get his sanity checked when he quit his secure job as a researcher at Samsung Electronics in 2015 to start his own YouTube channel.
Yoon now runs a YouTube channel about pursuing dream jobs and is supporting himself from his savings. One of Yoon s popular YouTube videos, "Why did I quit Samsung Electronics?" has got at least 137,000 views since it was posted in December.
The 65 million won ($57,619) a year salary - triple South Korea’s average entry level wage - plus top-notch healthcare and other benefits offered by the world s biggest smartphone and memory chip maker was the envy of many college graduates.
But burnt out and disillusioned by repeated night shifts, narrowing opportunities for promotion and skyrocketing property prices that have pushed home ownership out of reach, the then 32-year old Yoon gave it all up in favor of an uncertain career as an internet content provider.
Yoon is among a growing wave of South Korean millennials ditching stable white collar jobs, even as unemployment spikes and millions of others still fight to get into the powerful, family-controlled conglomerates known as chaebol.
Some young Koreans are also moving out of city for farming or taking blue collar jobs abroad, shunning their society’s traditional measures of success - well-paid office work, raising a family and buying an apartment.
"My mom’s friends mostly asked if I had gone crazy," Yoon said, adding he would quit again if he went back to his old job, recalling how unhappy and stressed he had seen his former boss become.
To be sure, the lure of a prestigious chaebol job remains strong, especially with the country mired in its worst job slump since 2009 and youth joblessness near a record high.
Samsung Electronics is still the most desired workplace for graduates as of 2019, a survey of 1,040 job seekers by Saramin, a job portal, showed in February.
However, many entering the workforce are much less willing to accept the long hours or mandatory drinking sessions synonymous with the country’s hierarchical, cutthroat corporate life, experts say.
Similar issues among younger workers are being seen globally. However, South Korea’s strict hierarchical corporate culture and oversupply of college graduates with homogeneous skills make the problem worse.
The mindset of the younger generations is shifting. This January, ‘quitting jobs’ appeared on the nation’s top 10 new year resolution list on major social media sites. Some left without support or new jobs lined up.
Among elementary school students, being a YouTube creator is now the fifth-ranked dream job, behind being a sports star, school teacher, doctor or a chef, a 2018 government poll showed.
Daedoseogwan is one of the successful examples. After quitting one of South Korea s conglomerates SK communications, the 40-year-old YouTube celebrity now has more than 19 million subscribers at his nerd-leaning game channel and makes more than $15 million a year.
Daedoseogwan’s success story has inspired many. Some workers are even going back to school to learn how to become a YouTuber, learning about video cameras and lighting.
