Korean Youth Interpersonal Trust Drops 20 Percentage Points in Decade

Interpersonal trust among young Koreans has fallen by 20 percentage points over the past decade, with life satisfaction remaining at the bottom among OECD nations as only three in ten young people are satisfied with their jobs and income.

The National Statistics Research Institute under the National Data Authority released the "2025 Youth Quality of Life Report" on Thursday, marking the first comprehensive analysis of overall quality of life among young people. The report examined 62 indicators across 12 areas including health, leisure, employment, wages, trust, fairness, and housing.

The most striking finding is that interpersonal trust, which stood at 74.8% for both those in their 20s (ages 19-29) and 30s (ages 30-39) in 2014, dropped to 53.2% and 54.7% respectively last year. While trust across all age groups also declined from 73.6% to 55.6% during this period, the decrease among young people was significantly larger. This suggests social distrust among youth spread particularly rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Interpersonal trust is an important indicator for young people who are in a period of expanding their social relationships, and it has been deteriorating recently," a research institute official said.

As of 2023, only 36% of young wage workers were generally satisfied with their jobs, remaining in the 30% range. Income satisfaction among youth was also just 27.7%, though this more than doubled from 12.8% in 2013.

Economic dissatisfaction appears to be leading to psychological crises. The youth suicide rate reached 24.4 per 100,000 people last year, up 1.3 from the previous year. Hope for social mobility was also limited, with only 27.7% believing they could improve their socioeconomic status through personal effort.

Overall life satisfaction among youth (ages 15-29) scored 6.50 out of 10 points. According to the OECD's World Happiness Report, Korea's youth life satisfaction (2021-2023 average) ranked 31st among 38 OECD countries.

Last year, the youth population (ages 19-34) stood at 10.404 million, accounting for 20.1% of the total population. The youth population ratio has been declining continuously from 28.0% in 2000. The proportion of young people living alone has risen steadily from 6.7% in 2000 to 25.8% in 2024.