Young Koreans curled up in the middle of summer: lying flat with depression, going home to gnaw the old, not looking for a job, not giving birth

Summer melting.

One

South Korea's 150 temples are overcrowded this summer, with 150 temples across the country flooded with people.

In order not to escape the summer and escape the red dust, they put down their luggage in the Zen room with the house sign of forbearance, and then let it go day and night. The mountains are high and the moon is small, and there is also a chill in midsummer.

Outside the mountain temple, the chill is spreading. Korean white-collar workers are popular to bring their own bento, because lunch has risen to the point where they can't afford to eat, "I feel that half of my salary is spent on food."

Sandwiches and triangle seaweed buns in convenience stores were sold out at noon, office instant noodles were flakes, and on social platforms, South Koreans called lunch inflation.

Coffee after meals has also become a burden, high-end cafes can be crowded, and more people choose to return to the company to drink instant coffee.

What was once an ordinary pork rib soup has become "only eaten when others are treated", and grilled pork belly in the national restaurant is a luxury. Finally, even lettuce, which is served free of charge during barbecue, begins to be charged.

The number of customers is decreasing, but the price increase cannot be stopped, and everything is on the train rushing off the tracks.

In May this year, the price of Korean pork belly rose by 11.4%, the price of fried sauce noodles increased by 12.5%, and according to the statistics agency of Korea, the price increase rate of Korean restaurants hit the highest record since May 1992.

In addition to the price increase, South Korea's hydropower medium gas rose 23.1% in October last year, and in May this year, electricity and gas bills rose again, and electric fans became the best-selling appliances because of power saving.

After takeaway was unaffordable, Korean frozen vegetables and sauce packs were popular, and the sales of prepared dishes quadrupled, and the popularity of college students changed from three meals a day to two meals a day.

Ewha Womans University students said, "Now I can only sit in a café all day on weekends, and I can't do anything, I can't afford to spend anything."

Online, young Koreans launched a "no-spend challenge", door-critical short videos are popular, and money-saving VLOGS can be seen everywhere. The younger generation pursues "divinity ratio" when shopping, which is the same price-performance ratio as God.

Young people who used to be keen on big names are now weighing and buying second-hand clothes, discounted by kilograms.

At a vintage clothing store in Hwayang-dong, Seoul, young people rummage through piles of old clothes. The dust is slowly falling, and life is returning to the ground.

The depression whimpered harshly, and the mirage evaporated and dissipated. South Korea's exports have been negative for six consecutive months, while house prices have fallen for nine consecutive months.

In Seoul, some high-end real estate projects fell by more than 40%, and the myth of Seoul's perpetual rise is a thing of the past, and only 60% of the income is left to grit their teeth to repay loans.

The sluggish economy has spawned a wave of unemployment. South Korea's major factories laid off employees, known as voluntary retirement, and since then derived "quiet dismissal", that is, requiring employees to leave silently.

South Korean university graduates have ushered in a difficult summer, and South Korean delivery workers have reached a record high of 430,000.

In April, 660,000 people between the ages of 20 and 39 in South Korea were registered as resting residents. The rest population refers to not working, not taking exams, not seeking employment, and not having children.

Barrenness is spreading into the future, the Great Depression is followed by aging, Seoul wedding halls are disappearing in batches, funeral parlors are overcrowded, sales of elderly health products exceed milk powder, and South Korean port cargo ships are struggling to recruit crews of the right age.

Fourteen local universities are no longer enrolled, and civil servants are unregistered for birth. On the front line of the Korean Dynasty, South Korea has considered using AI sentinels to make up for the continuous decline in young troops.

In the cold, a large number of young people returned to their homeland and lived with their parents, known as the "kangaroo tribe", and one of their daily hobbies was watching "daze live broadcast".

Daze live broadcast is popular in South Korea. People huddled in the middle of summer, open the free live broadcast room, and watch the Earth broadcast by NASA in a daze.

The picture has hardly changed, but everyone knows that change is happening.

Two

South Korea had a long golden age, which they proudly called the "Miracle of the Han River."

From 1962 to 1994, South Korea soared for 32 years with an average annual GDP growth rate of 9%. In 1994, South Korea's per capita income exceeded $10,000 per year.

That year, South Korea was admitted to the OECD and joined the "club of developed countries." South Korean newspapers cheered, saying that South Korea had been upgraded from an Asian dragon to a world dragon.

That year, South Korea held 13 of the world's top 500 companies, ahead of Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Samsung ranks as the fifth largest group in the world, with operations in 69 countries.

The eastern coast, once inhabited only by fishermen, has become bustling and noisy. In port cities, modern cars go to sea and go all over the world.

At that time, it was still called the capital of Seoul, like a fierce construction site with steel bars, covered by dust during the day, but at night, it would suddenly turn into a neon city.

In 1985, Seoul built the Korea Life Building, the tallest building in Asia at the time. The building is equipped with a high-speed elevator, and visitors can soar into the sky in just 1 minute and 20 seconds.

In those years, South Koreans, who were raging with the golden age, never knew what depression was. They firmly believe in the fairness of the college entrance examination, believe in striving to get rich, and firmly believe that knowledge can change destiny.

After the Seoul Olympics, 85% of South Koreans identified themselves as middle class, saying in an interview with the BBC documentary:

At the end of the 20th century, every Korean could live the same life as the British middle class.

After becoming wealthy, Koreans became popular with gold jewelry, enthusiastic about overseas travel, and were criticized by the Korean media as "ugly Koreans" because of their vices such as playing cards everywhere and jumping in line.

All the joy came to an abrupt end in 1998, when the financial tsunami hit South Korea hard, and the country was on the verge of bankruptcy.

In the aftermath of the tsunami, a generation's wealth was wiped out, and the worst consequences were South Korea's move toward an hourglass-type society. The middle class is shrinking, the class is solidifying, and the gap between the rich and the poor is getting bigger and bigger.

Since then, benefiting from the wave of globalization and the Internet, South Korea has maintained a slow pace. However, a chill is brewing in the hourglass.

At one end of the hourglass, the bottom layer is increasingly desperate for the future, and they leap to the path, leaving only a slender exam channel. Entering universities and civil servants became the dragon gate of destiny.

Those who do not want to take the exam choose to gamble, speculate on houses, stocks, and super air coins, and there are few winners, and more people become dust in the hourglass.

In 2006, a Times reporter walked out of Samsung's tall headquarters building, near the subway passage, homeless people covered their bodies with cardboard and shivered.

The lights of the building do not shine underground. A middle-aged man drank filthy soju and shouted to passers-by, "I'm hungry, just give me a little change."

Three

On March 10, the Korean drama "Dark Glory" continued, Netflix servers were crowded to downtime, and everyone wanted to see the fate of the rich girl Yeonjin.

In the play, she is the queen of the high, and the people at the bottom in her eyes are as humble as ants and can never cross the class boundaries:

You're probably born to hear, "You've reached your destination, navigation is over," and you should be familiar with it.

Is your life like hell because of me? Stop talking nonsense, from the moment you are born, your life is already like hell.

The South Koreans gritted their teeth and looked at Yeonjin, and even more desperately, every word she said was reality.

In the eighties, more than eighty percent of Koreans were still consciously middle-class, and twenty years later, the proportion was less than 20%.

Today, the average assets of households in the first tier of South Korea are 1,654.57 million won, 64 times that of the fifth tranche.

The two worlds became out of reach, and the bottom could only struggle with all its might.

White-collar workers in Seoul are walking faster and faster, one-eighth of the annual income of dual-career workers has to tutor their children, and parents across the country burn incense and pray during the college entrance examination, even as the employment rate of college students declines year by year.

Three years into the pandemic, South Korean university graduates were called "tissue interns," and employers fired after using it once.

The farther destination is called the "fried chicken conjecture", that is, no matter what you do, as long as you don't mix into the upper class, the final belonging is to work in a fried chicken shop.

In 2020, the Korea Youth Policy Institute surveyed 42% of young Koreans who believe they are in poverty, of which 34% believe they will not be able to escape for life.

They looked up, and the huge canopy of the chaebol had obscured the heavenly dome, and it turned out that they had been in the shadow of the canopy all their lives.

They are depressed, they lie flat, they fantasize about saving money to achieve financial freedom, and they plan to flee to live abroad.

And those middle-aged people trapped in mortgages and workplaces are increasingly afraid to consume and invest, for fear of stepping on a wrong step and falling into the abyss.

Middle-aged South Koreans dare not watch Netflix's equally popular "Squid Game":

"Those episodes remind me of my colleague who committed suicide, and the reality is that it can kill people."

The chill of savings eventually led to a long depression.

Class solidification leads to consumption downgrade, low fertility and loss of confidence, the epidemic is only the trigger, class solidification is the root cause of depression.

After the chill loomed, South Korean President Yoon Seok-hyeol offered a response, saying he wanted to rebuild the middle class. The purpose of rebuilding the middle class is to restore class mobility.

When everyone has confidence in the future, the chill will dissipate.

In the northeast of the same latitude, Fan Wei in time and space, ran through the long season, and the train roared, trying to pass through the cold.

Fan Wei chased the train and shouted:

Look ahead, don't look back.