Young Koreans go from 'study hard' to 'develop skills' as they rethink blue-collar work — with a catch

For most of his college years, Cha Sang-jin never imagined himself working a technical job.

The 26-year-old studied tourism management at a university in Korea and expected to work in the field. That changed after graduation, when he took a job at an injection-molding manufacturer near his family home. Working with equipment and production conditions, he saw how his own decisions could change the quality of the finished product. The experience overturned assumptions he had held about technical work and deepened an existing interest in semiconductors.

“Staying there would have been easier,” Cha said about the thought of starting over. “But I didn’t want to compromise on the work I’d be doing for the next several decades just to save a few years now.”

Cha returned to school this year, enrolling in the semiconductor systems department at Korea Polytechnics’ Seongnam Campus — starting over in a technical field.

His detour runs against the traditionally favored Korean career trajectory: Study hard, earn a university degree and move into a stable white-collar job. But that formula appears to be losing some of its hold over young job seekers.

A May survey of 1,800 Gen Z job seekers by the recruitment platform Jinhaksa Catch found that 68 percent viewed blue-collar jobs positively, up 5 percentage points from a year earlier. Given a choice between a shift-based production job that pays 70 million won ($52,000) a year and an office job offering a salary of 30 million won and no overtime, 60 percent chose the production job. Pay was by far the biggest attraction, cited by 66 percent of those with a positive view.

The shift, however, is selective rather than an across-the-board embrace of factory work. Young Koreans are showing particular interest in jobs that combine strong pay with technical expertise and room to build a career, while many lower-paid, lower-skilled manufacturing jobs continue to struggle to attract them.

Not just any blue-collar job

The divide is between skilled technical jobs that offer pay and upward mobility versus routine production work with fewer prospects for either.

“You have to separate the two,” said Lee Sang-ho, the director of employment information analysis at the Korea Employment Information Service. Demand for skilled technical jobs is strong, he said, while routine production jobs with low wages and little prospect for advancement can face severe worker shortages.

In the Catch survey, information technology (IT), batteries and semiconductors ranked first among fields of interest at 32 percent, followed by automobiles, shipbuilding and aviation at 25 percent. Beauty, cooking and baking came next at 19 percent, followed by electrical and electronics work at 18 percent. Construction, civil engineering and interior work drew 13 percent; machinery, metalworking and welding 10 percent; and piping and facilities work 3 percent.

The first category is broad — IT, batteries and semiconductors were grouped together — so the figure cannot simply be read as demand for semiconductor production jobs. But it points to strong interest in sectors associated with advanced technology and major manufacturers.

That enthusiasm is already familiar in the frenzy around "kingsanjik" jobs — a portmanteau of the English word “king” and "saengsanjik," Korean for production work — at major companies. When Hyundai Motor reopened production hiring in 2023 after a decade-long pause, about 120,000 people applied for 400 positions — a ratio of roughly 300 to one.

The appeal is not difficult to see: Hyundai production workers have been reported to earn around 100 million won a year on average, while starting compensation, including bonuses, has been estimated at around 50 million to 60 million won.

Lee said young people are particularly interested in future-oriented industries such as semiconductors, information and communications technology and biotechnology. Their preferences narrow further within those sectors, with major companies drawing far more interest than small and midsize firms.

“What young people prefer are manufacturing jobs that offer prospects for growth and can serve as a ladder to better technology or better jobs,” Lee said. “It would be difficult to simply say that they prefer manufacturing jobs in general.”

Even advanced industries do not necessarily offer an easy entry point. Lee said companies increasingly favor experienced hires and are beginning to demand AI-related capabilities alongside conventional technical skills.

A skill that can lead somewhere

The changing calculus is reflected among young people who have already spent years pursuing another path.

Korea Polytechnics, a state-run vocational education network, offers two-year degree programs and shorter job-training courses at 34 campuses nationwide. It calls students who previously attended or graduated from another college before enrolling in its degree programs "U-turn students."

The share of entrants with a bachelor's rose from 16.8 percent in 2021 to 25.2 percent in 2025 before easing to 23.1 percent this year.

Kim Jae-min of Korea Polytechnics’ public relations office said competition for admissions to electrical programs was up 156 percent from a year earlier in the latest cycle, while semiconductor programs were up 137 percent. Industrial facilities, automation and machinery-related programs also recorded increases, he said.

Kim cautioned that demographics and heightened interest in booming sectors such as semiconductors may have contributed to the numbers. But across the career-change cases his office collects, one phrase repeatedly appears: Students want “a skill of my own.”

Many had spent years preparing for civil service examinations or trying to enter crowded job markets after majoring in humanities and other nontechnical subjects, Kim said. Others had worked jobs in which they struggled to see a long-term career path.

“They say they want a skill that can’t easily be replaced and a foundation that will allow them to work for a long time,” Kim said, adding that nationally recognized technical certifications can make that path more tangible.

The attraction extends beyond manufacturing.

Bae Yun-seul, a graduate of Yonsei University — one of the most prestigious universities in Korea — left a welfare center job after two years to become a wallpaper installer. She described a similar calculation in a July 2021 first-person column for the Korean online publication Firenze’s Table. Bae wrote that she had sought work where “growth and results are concrete rather than abstract” and skill itself could earn recognition; she said young tradespeople she met were also drawn by higher pay and the prospect of working for years with skills of their own.

That does not mean technical work is necessarily easier. Kim said work-life balance rarely appears as a main reason in the career-change cases his office collects, and many popular manufacturing jobs, including semiconductor work, can involve demanding shift schedules.

Cha described the appeal less in terms of comfort than accumulation.

“What I like most is that each experience remains as a skill,” he said. “If I solve one problem, I can use that experience the next time something similar happens. As time passes, you become someone who can solve problems you haven’t encountered before.”

A widening divide inside manufacturing

That opportunity to build expertise, however, is distributed unevenly.

Government wage data also show how wide the gap can be within blue-collar work. Last year, machinery operators and assemblers earned about 4 million won a month on average, while skilled trades workers earned about 3.5 million won and simple laborers just over 2 million won, according to the Ministry of Employment and Labor.

Lee described what is happening inside manufacturing as a “K-shaped polarization”: Higher-skilled jobs offering strong pay and a visible path forward attract applicants, while routine, relatively low-skilled production jobs can remain chronically short of workers.

He pointed to graduates of semiconductor-focused Meister high schools, specialized vocational schools designed to prepare students for industry. Two graduates may leave with only a small difference in ability, he said, yet begin on sharply different paths if one enters a major company such as Samsung Electronics or SK hynix and the other starts at a smaller firm. The gap begins with starting pay and can widen further over time.

That does not mean a smaller manufacturer is a dead end. Lee said workers can spend three or five years acquiring company-specific skills and use that experience to move to better jobs. The policy challenge, he said, is making that experience function as a genuine career ladder.

AI adds another layer of uncertainty. The Catch survey found that only 6 percent of respondents who viewed blue-collar work positively cited lower AI replacement risk, far below the 66 percent who pointed to pay.

Lee warned against a simple equation in which white-collar jobs are vulnerable to AI while technical jobs are safe. Automation has already replaced some routine manufacturing tasks, he said, and physical AI could take over more. At the same time, workers who know how to use AI may become more valuable in technical and engineering roles.

Cha, the 26-year-old, takes a similar view. Semiconductor manufacturing may sit closer to the infrastructure enabling AI than many other industries, he said, but no occupation is guaranteed protection indefinitely. What matters more to him is whether experience continues to make him more capable.

The transition has not been without a hitch. Cha arrived expecting mainly to study semiconductor processes, only to find that understanding equipment also required knowledge of electrical systems, sensors, chemistry and other fields. Shift work can be physically demanding, he added, and manufacturing depends heavily on communication among workers rather than individual technical ability alone.

That experience has also changed what he considers a “good job.”

“In the past, I thought first about a big company and a high salary,” Cha said. “Now, I think it’s work that makes you want to keep at it and solve the problem even when things get difficult.”

“It isn’t defined by a particular company or salary,” he added. “It’s work where you can find meaning for yourself.”

BY SHIN WOO-JIN [[email protected]]