More than seven out of 10 young households in South Korea do not own homes, with the proportion living in monthly rental housing continuing to rise, according to a government report released Thursday.
The report also warned that rural areas have been experiencing natural population decline since around 2000, with young people in their 20s and 30s increasingly concentrating in the Seoul metropolitan area, requiring urgent policy measures.
According to "Social Trends in Korea 2025" published by the National Statistical Research Institute under the National Data Office on January 26, the proportion of households without home ownership among those aged 39 and under reached 73.2% in 2023. This represents a 7.3 percentage point increase from 65.9% in 2015 over eight years.
In contrast, the proportion of non-homeowners among those aged 40 to 59 declined by 2 percentage points from 39.5% to 37.5% during the same period. The overall non-homeownership rate across all age groups was 43.6%, showing little change from 44.0% in 2015.
Analysts note that while older generations have succeeded in protecting their assets through home purchases, young people are increasingly being marginalized in the housing market.
The share of monthly rent among tenant households has continued to rise since 1995, when it stood at 32.8%, nearly doubling to 60.1% by 2020. Seoul recorded the highest tenant household ratio nationwide at 53.4%. This trend reflects a combination of fears over jeonse fraud crimes, rising housing prices, and the surge in single-person households.
The report found that an unstable labor market structure underlies housing insecurity. The number of ultra-short-time workers, defined as those working fewer than 15 hours per week, is estimated at 1.06 million this year. Their share among all wage workers has surged from 1.5% in 2015 to 4.8% this year.
Notably, 19.0% of ultra-short-time workers aged 29 and under do not even receive minimum wage, the highest rate among all age groups. With housing costs soaring while incomes stagnate or decline, young people are losing the capacity to save for the future or invest in home purchases.
The report also highlighted accelerating population decline in rural areas. While the national population began declining naturally in 2020, regional areas started experiencing this trend around 2000, according to the National Data Office's analysis.
An analysis of 89 depopulating regions nationwide found that these areas had already experienced a population "death cross," where deaths exceed births, around 2000. The decisive factor driving regional decline is the exodus of people in their 20s and 30s.
Over the 20-year period from 2001 to 2020, nearly half (44.4%) of those leaving depopulating areas were in their 20s (24.7%) and 30s (19.7%). Particularly noteworthy is that 47.2% of those leaving held university degrees or higher, indicating that high-quality human resources are flowing toward the capital region.
Poverty among the elderly, a chronic problem in South Korea, remains severe. The income poverty rate among Koreans aged 66 and over stands at 39.7%, 2.7 times the OECD average of 14.8% and the highest among surveyed countries. This is 2.5 times higher than the overall population poverty rate of 14.9%.
"Because pension systems for retirement income security have not fully matured, fiscal investments such as the basic pension are necessary," said Kim Sung-ah, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs.
