80,000 South Korean young adults are NEETs; they are “Not in Education, Employment, or Training.” The statistics count those between 15 and 29 years old who have left school and decided to take a rest without preparing for job applications, doing housework, or suffering unfortunate circumstances that hinder them from committing to education or the workforce. This number is on the rise — why is a country with such high standards of living and education failing to encourage young adults to enter the “real world”?

South Korea has traditionally been a country with a considerable unemployment rate. Young adults asking why it is so hard to get jobs has been a routine discussion, and tackling unemployment is always one of the most urgent and prioritized tasks for newly elected politicians. Still, this doesn’t explain why NEETs wouldn’t even seek jobs in the first place.

One potential cause lies in the nature of the labor market in South Korea. Most workplaces accessible to inexperienced young adults are short-term, unstable, and uneconomic — their jobs are guaranteed only temporarily, and the wages and welfare they earn are also significantly inferior compared to full-time, regular workers. The dual labor market aggravates the gap between those in the primary labor market, who have “quality” jobs that are secure and pay well, and those in the secondary labor market, who do not. This reality is dispiriting — however hard young adults work, the rewards are pre-determined based on the labor market they are in. What is even more disheartening is that this dynamic will persist as it saves employers from spending money and nuisance.

Another consideration is that many young adults do not feel economically safe. A fundamental principle of economics puts forward that people need to feel secure and protected enough to proactively engage in economic activities. This explains why many young adults are, ironically, afraid of earning money and partaking in the market, as they themselves are the only ones who can protect their own assets. For one, scams are no longer a bizarre sight in South Korea. From voice phishing to insurance fraud and from mass-scale to single-target, the country has seen a variety of scams over the past years. As weird as it might sound to praise them, scammers have evolved, are evolving, and will continue to evolve to develop new methods to expropriate from others.

Most recently, “villa kings” owning as many as 2,700 underwater homes were uncovered. They abused the unique jeonse system in South Korea that requires tenants to pay 50 to 80 percent of the market value as a deposit and vanished without returning the deposit to the tenants at the end of their contract. Of the victims were young adults who had just started earning a stable income, which they saved up and paid as a jeonse deposit. The special law regarding jeonse that the parliament passed is limiting, as it entails an extremely complicated process for people to be recognized as victims of jeonse fraud, and it is also difficult to detect these sophisticated scams. At this point, all people can do is to do as much research as they can to make the best educated decision and pray that no unexpected evil will intervene. With such horrifying uncertainty — that they might lose their entire fortune in a split second — lingering in the air, it is more than understandable why NEETs are hesitating to dive into this reality.

Many older adults in the Baby Boomer Generation or Generation X hark back to their youth and call out NEETs for being ungrateful; despite the advances the world has seen and the expanded breadth of opportunities they have access to, many young adults remain demotivated, unlike their parents who have strived to make the best out of their circumstances. But living — surviving — as an adult has never been easy. There were then problems then; there are now problems now.

So, let us stop asking why NEETs are not being productive. Rather, give them time, give them faith, and give them a chance; they are what NEETs need to get back on track.