"Studying 12 Hours a Day, Even Military-Style Boot Camps"... Where Desperate Young Job Seekers Are Heading [News File]

"There are welding sequences from number 1 to number 39..."

Lectures begin at 9:00 AM, classes wrap up at 9:00 PM, and then the studying starts all over again. This place where people eat, sleep, and receive training is not a boarding school or an academy for repeat college applicants, but a live-in job training "boot camp" for young job seekers. With the youth job crisis being as severe as it is, even live-in job preparation facilities have emerged. Just how severe is the youth employment problem, which is always described as critical?

From the beginning of this year through August, the number of employed young people in their 20s decreased by 5.6% compared to the same period last year. Comparing the same periods, this drop is the largest since the IMF foreign exchange crisis. A total of 193,000 jobs were shed this year, a level more severe than the drops seen in 2009 during the global financial crisis (142,000) and in 2020 right after COVID-19 (111,000). According to announcements by the Ministry of Employment and Labor, while the overall employment rate is similar to last year, the youth employment rate alone has dropped by 1 percentage point. Furthermore, landing a first job takes 1.3 months longer than it did 10 years ago. With the situation like this, in April of this year, the government injected 988 billion won in supplementary budget funds to tackle the youth job crisis by planning the "K-New Deal Academy." Through this, the Ministry of Employment and Labor, alongside about 50 companies, is running job-specific training programs designed to help with employment.

The place I visited was LS Future Institute in Anseong, Gyeonggi Province. It is a three-month live-in course where participants stay at the LS Group training center and learn various skills required for their jobs, such as coding, report writing, and interview techniques. Because they spend 24 hours a day eating, sleeping, and focusing entirely on job preparation here, their skills inevitably improve rapidly.

[Kim Yubin (Age 27) / Suwon, Gyeonggi Province: (It's been about a month since you entered the live-in program, do you feel things have gotten easier compared to when you first started?) Yes. When it came to handling data, at first I could only handle it at about an Excel level, but now I feel I can completely break down data and extract what I want from within it.]

From a corporate perspective, because they can design the training programs themselves, there is the advantage of being able to cultivate talent equipped with customized job skills.

[Lee Wooseop / Head of HRD Planning Team, LS Future Institute: We are running the program so that skills recently demanded by companies, such as AI utilization skills, can be enhanced through this program. For companies, it has significance in that they can proactively secure prepared talent.]

Even after training finishes, participants continue their own studies in study rooms—such as language study, certificate preparation, and project discussions—meaning that days here often wrap up only after midnight. Kim Young-sik, who came from Wonju, Gangwon Province, said he is approaching this program with a desperate mindset.

[Kim Young-sik (Age 32) / Wonju, Gangwon Province: I should say I am a bit more desperate. Because, well, there is age to consider. Three months is even shorter than military service, and pushing hard for three months feels like it will prevent any regrets later.]

Cha Seil, from Nam-gu, Busan, already has six years of work experience in a manufacturing company's HR team, but thinking that AI skills are essential in a fast-changing industry, he voluntarily re-entered the job market as a boot camp "recruit." The job market he returned to has changed a lot.

[Cha Seil (Age 31) / Nam-gu, Busan: You can even tell from the recruitment postings—they ask about AI competencies, such as what you have achieved by utilizing AI. I am approaching this with a heavy heart, thinking of it as my final challenge. Our ultimate goal is successful employment, and our collective wish is to achieve that final purpose after fully equipping ourselves with professional competence.]
A "boot camp" is originally a military term meaning a rookie training center. Everyone entered the facility calling themselves an "employment recruit." The average age of the employment recruits who entered LS Future Institute is 28. Over 100 people applied from all over the country, and 31 were selected. The competition rate exceeded 3 to 1. When I visited, about a month after admission, 4 people had successfully landed jobs and checked out, leaving only 27 recruits behind. Experts pay attention to the symbolism held by the term "boot camp."

[Lee Joo-hee / Professor of Sociology, Ewha Womans University: It means that (boot camps) require you to enter the facility like the military and learn all day long. It feels like job competition has turned into an employment war.]

This is interpreted to mean that "live-in job preparation" is practically the process of becoming a soldier who can survive in an employment battlefield. The young people who visited the boot camp were contemplating and preparing for their futures more fiercely than anyone else. However, on the other hand, while looking at statistics concerning those sacrificing their youth to prepare for jobs and a labor market that only grows colder, I found myself thinking that what is most needed is a job market where such an extreme form of live-in job preparation is not necessary in the first place.

※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.