Reimagining education to address Korea’s youth unemployment crisis

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Reimagining education to address Korea’s youth unemployment crisis

Published: 01 Oct. 2025, 00:02

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Yeom Jae-ho

The author is the president of Taejae University.

Korea is now in an era of more than a million unemployed young people. According to Statistics Korea, 504,000 youth are categorized as not seeking work, 269,000 are officially unemployed and 434,000 are preparing for jobs. Combined, the figure amounts to 1.2 million young adults without employment. Among those in their thirties, 316,000 are also out of work.

The arrival of the AI era is accelerating job losses. Microsoft cut 15,000 employees this year, while Amazon has let go of 27,000 workers over the past three years. Much of this stems from artificial intelligence rapidly replacing software developers and mid-level managers.

A university student walks alone up an empty staircase on March 2, 2023, the first day of the spring semester, at a provincial university in the Gyeongsang region that saw zero applicants for eight departments in its 2023 regular admissions. [YONHAP]

University graduates are particularly vulnerable. Many trained in specialized, rigid fields that matched the 20th-century model of mass production now find themselves sidelined. Routine, repetitive work — once the foundation of industrial economies — has become more efficiently handled by machines.

Almost a decade ago, the World Economic Forum’s 2016 “Future of Jobs” report projected that 85 percent of 21st-century occupations would not exist in the 22nd century. Yet Korean universities today still continue to educate students in outdated, narrow majors. The result is a widespread mismatch: graduates abandon their fields or give up altogether, concluding that available jobs are lacking in quality. In 2022, only about 66 percent of graduates secured employment. This raises questions: is this the inevitable cost of AI, or should government policy force large corporations to absorb surplus graduates?

Service members nearing discharge wait for recruitment consultations with participating organizations and companies at the 2025 Military Job Fair held at KINTEX in Goyang, Gyeonggi, on May 7. [YONHAP]

The U.S. offers a historic lesson. On June 22, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act — better known as the G.I. Bill. Anticipating that 15 million soldiers returning from World War II would face unemployment, the National Resources Planning Board began preparing programs for retraining and reintegration as early as 1942.

During the war, 17 million Americans worked in defense industries, comprising 40 percent of the labor force. Within a year after the war ended, 10 million of those jobs disappeared or shifted to civilian sectors, threatening economic collapse. The G.I. Bill helped avert disaster and ushered in unprecedented prosperity in the 1960s.

The legislation provided tuition, unemployment benefits and housing allowances for veterans. In just seven years, 8 million veterans pursued education through the program. Some 2.3 million entered universities, 3.5 million enrolled in vocational schools, and another 3.4 million pursued apprenticeships. College enrollment more than doubled compared to a decade earlier. By 1947, nearly half of U.S. college students were veterans. At the time, Harvard’s tuition — including housing — was about $525 a year. The G.I. Bill covered nearly all of it, while also offering living stipends and interest-free housing loans.

By the time the program ended in 1956, the government had invested $14.5 billion. That investment paid dividends, as the influx of educated workers expanded the middle class and generated federal tax revenues that far exceeded the initial cost of the program.

Korea now needs its own version of the G.I. Bill for youth. Regional universities, many at risk of disappearing, should reorient themselves toward retraining unemployed graduates. Rather than relying on government subsidies or recruiting foreign students, they should build large-scale master’s programs in AI Transformation (AX).

AI is reshaping every sector — finance, law, health care, education, culture, media, public administration and manufacturing. Preparing the next generation to apply AI across all fields is urgent. Such programs would not require major faculty expansions: Remote lectures could deliver core knowledge through shared video courses, while workshops designed with industry partners could provide hands-on, hybrid experiences. U.S. institutions such as Cornell University and Arizona State University already run widespread online master’s programs.

Chey Tae-won, chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry and SK Group, delivers congratulatory remarks at the launch ceremony of the Manufacturing AI Transformation (AX) Alliance at the Westin Josun Hotel in Jung District, Seoul, on Sept. 10. [YONHAP]

Instead of duplicating efforts — such as building 10 new Seoul National University campuses, spending 2.4 trillion won ($1.7 billion) on regional innovation programs or allocating 150 trillion won to computing centers — Korea would benefit more from investing in AX talent. Covering tuition for such programs and redirecting youth unemployment subsidies toward living expenses for students could create immediate impact.

If the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and ICT jointly launched a national initiative to train one million AX specialists, the benefits would be twofold: revitalizing struggling regional universities and accelerating Korea’s adaptation to the AI age.

Only such a transformative education system will allow Korea to navigate the challenges of China’s rise and U.S. protectionism while maintaining competitiveness in the 21st century.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.