Jobless South Korean Millennials Are So Broke They Eat Only One Meal a Day

The news comes from a survey published on Thursday by two Korean job sites, JobKorea and Albamon, where 1,147 job seekers aged 25 to 30 responded about their eating habits.

As it turned out, a whopping 83.1% of the respondents skipped at least one meal a day, while an alarming 16.6% ate only once in the same period.

Meanwhile, 43% of the respondents cited “economic burden” as the reason why they would not take three meals a day. The average price per meal was ₩4,906 ($4.36).

Others had other reasons for skipping meals, such as lack of appetite.

As per government statistics, South Korea’s youth unemployment exceeds overall unemployment, passing as much as 12% so far this year.

In April, the latter hit a 17-year high — a figure of about 1.17 million, the highest after February’s 1.35 million, The Investor reported.

According to Quartz, the unemployment rate among those aged 15 to 29 increased markedly since 2012, when former President Park Geun-hye was elected.

Still, the issue has always been persistent in South Korea.

Even those who graduate at the top of their class struggle to find work, and experts are blaming the country’s monopolistic conglomerates (locally known as chaebol) for the seemingly helpless situation.

That being said, it seems Korea’s young job seekers will be skipping more meals for now.