[WHY] Why do many young adults choose isolation?

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Published: 19 Aug. 2023, 08:00 Updated: 19 Aug. 2023, 08:40

[WHY] Why do many young adults choose isolation?

[JOONGANG PHOTO]

Ever just wanted to press pause on life and stay in bed the whole day?

Sometimes, the simplest tasks such as getting up, getting dressed and leaving the house feel harder than they should.

Most people manage to pull together and power through school or work, even begrudgingly.

But what happens if a bad day turns into a bad month or even year? How do you recover then?

Five percent of Korea’s young adult population (ages 19 to 34) are struggling to find the answer, according to the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs.

Called social recluses - or “recluse loners” as they have been dubbed by the government - these individuals voluntarily withdraw from society by locking themselves inside their rooms or homes for months or even years on end.

The national government officially recognized social recluses for the first time in April 2023, when it introduced the term in the Youth Welfare Support Act. Accordingly, recluse adolescents ages 9 to 24 are eligible for a monthly stipend of 650,000 won, or some $500. This is on top of additional support for hospital visits and even legal advice.

Foreign outlets, including the BBC and CNN, spotlighted the policy as a curious way to approach the social recluse problem.

So is an allowance going to help young shut-ins make their way back to society and, more to the point, why are so many of them choosing confinement?

Recluses in Korea: How they came to be

“It was my room, then the hospital, then back to my room and to the hospital again for five years,” said Jun Woo-hyeon, 21. He came out of reclusion two days before this interview in early August. He now lives in a co-living space for recluse youths in eastern Seoul.

“Since I was a child, I was always questioned why I couldn’t do this and why I couldn’t be that until I truly believed I was useless. My father rejected my real self and demanded something different. And as much as I tried, I couldn’t give that to him.”

As the stress compiled, Jun started having stomachaches. Eventually, they became so frequent that he had to drop out of middle school.

“Even in school where my father wasn’t around, I felt like I was walking on thin ice, seconds away from messing up and falling into the ocean,” he said. “My room was the only place where I felt safe.”

Song Kyeong-seok, 37, is a former recluse who was in a reclusive state for 10 years.

“The mounting anxiety of getting a good job in my mid-20s led to stress eating,” he said. “I must have weighed over 150 kilograms [330 pounds] at the time.”

He graduated college with a civil engineering degree, but just barely with poor grades.

“My mother was in and out of hospitals for almost my entire life while my father worked grueling shifts at construction sites and Korean barbeque restaurants,” Song said. “I felt like I was wasting his hard-worked money in college.”

“I never even wanted to be a civil engineer,” he continued. “I wanted to be an animator or a voice actor. I gave my dream up during high school due to my parents' disapproval.”

In reclusion, Song spent his days in front of a computer in his parent’s house, playing games and watching YouTube videos throughout the night until he was so exhausted and “almost fainted into sleep” at dawn. Due to his poor eating and sleeping habits, he now suffers from stage 4 chronic kidney disease.

The Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs in 2021 estimated that there are 540,000 young adults ages 19 to 34, or 5 percent of the age group, who are recluses similar to Jun and Song.

Most of the group began their reclusion in their 20s, according to studies. A Busan Metropolitan Government survey found that 52 percent of the city’s current recluses entered reclusion between the ages of 20 and 29.

There is no national standard or a set period to be considered a recluse in Korea, but government studies define them as individuals who stay inside a confined space for an extended period of time with no or near zero interactions with society.

Covid-19 caused the number of recluses to spike. The Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs reports that the number of young adults who went into voluntary isolation jumped 60 percent between 2019 and 2021.

The recent rise of recluses and the cost of lost labor is especially concerning amid the country’s shrinking labor force, aging population and record-low birth rate.

The institute calculates that the economic cost for each individual who goes into social recluse is 1.6 billion won ($1.2 million), assuming that isolation starts at the age of 19. From the age of 25, it is 1.5 billion won, and from 45 it is 1 billion won.

Why withdraw from society?

[JOONGANG PHOTO]

A survey of Seoul’s social recluses conducted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government in January 2023 suggested that the majority of reclusive young adults experienced family trouble during their childhood.

Out of the 129,000 young adults who were found to be in reclusion in Seoul, 62 percent answered that they have mentally suffered from a family member. 58 percent said they have undergone sudden financial difficulties, and 57 percent said they have been bullied or tormented by non-family.

As to why young adult recluses are not leaving their homes, 35 percent said it was because they had difficulties getting hired; 10 percent said because they faced difficulties in social life; 7.9 percent said because they stopped going to school or work; 1.5 percent said that because they failed to get accepted into a university; and 45.6 percent answered none of the above, according to the Office for Government Policy Coordination in its 2022 Comprehensive Survey of Young Adults in Korea.

The January Seoul survey also found that many lack a person who can give a helping hand in their time of need.

Some 80 percent of the city’s young adult recluses either have zero physical contact with anyone other than their close family members or make contact with them once or twice annually.

“I think everyone can agree that hardships are inevitable in life,” Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs researcher Kim Seong-a said. “But the way we trudge forward is by speaking to people to get support. Social recluses don’t have these people around them, so their experiences of defeat cumulate.”

Japan’s hikikomori phenomenon: A looming problem for Korea

Social recluses were first identified in Japan in the late 1990s, under the term hikikomori which translates to “pulling inward, being confined.”

Japan has 1.46 million working-age recluses, Japan’s Cabinet Office said in April.

What was originally perceived as a social phenomenon specific to Japan grew into a global issue, to the point that the term hikikomori was included in the Oxford Dictionary of English in 2010.

Japan now faces a so-called “8050 Problem,” which refers to the issue of hikikomori children currently in their 50s living with their parents in their 80s and sharing the parents’ meager pensions. Most of these recluses have been in reclusion for decades, failing to get the needed support during the “golden time” for recluses which is during their adolescence and young adulthood.

Korea’s policy for recluses

The Korean law recognizes social recluses as of April 2023.

Via a partial amendment to the Youth Welfare Support Act, recluse adolescents are now part of a category of troubled youths that the law calls “youths in crisis.”

Youths in crisis used to refer to just three types of adolescents aged 9 to 24: those who are not enrolled in school, those who lack proper guardians and those considered to be in danger of becoming a delinquent.

“Reclusive loner adolescents” who live in a confined space for an extended time period, demonstrate acute social avoidance and have significant difficulties in carrying on a normal life have been added to this category.

All those who meet the aforementioned conditions are allowed a monthly allowance of 650,000 won as well as subsidies for hospital visits, counseling, job consulting sessions and legal advice, all regulated by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.

Inside a room of a social recluse in Seoul [JOONGANG PHOTO]

Although recluse experts view it as a sloppy approach to solving the country’s recluse problem, it is a start nonetheless.

“Social recluses lack human connection above all and that can’t be established with money,” Kim said. “What they need more than money are relationship-building programs and a new environment that is safely separated from their place of isolation and family.”

“[With the Gender Ministry’s policy], they are just getting the same support as all the other troubled youths,” said Professor Kim Hye-won of Hoseo University’s Department of Youth Culture and Counseling. “It is certainly lacking and very late in coming, but it’s a start, and we have a long road ahead.”

Negative social stigma around social recluses

The reason why legal support for recluses in Korea has been so slow in coming is that the problem has always been deemed a “personal, family issue instead of a collective, social one,” Professor Kim said.

“Korean society has long played an endless blame game - blaming the recluses for being weak and then blaming the parents for pressuring them too hard. So there was no reason for the government to interfere.”

More recently, social recluses are being connected to dormant criminals or social misfits following reports of numerous cases of knife violence.

Twenty-three-year-old Jung Yoo-jung stabbed a random female in Busan in May. Thirty-three-year-old Cho Sun went on a stabbing spree in Silim-dong near Sillim Station in southern Seoul in July and 22-year-old Choi Won-jong went on one near Seohyeon Station in Bundang, Gyeonggi, in August. Cho and Choi's stabbing sprees critically injured 11 and killed one.

All three reportedly had no jobs and lived in isolation around the time of their crimes.

Twenty-three-year-old Jung Yoo-jung stabbed a random female in Busan in May. [YONHAP]

“Our current society has a structural problem in which young people have a very difficult time entering the workforce, let alone succeeding,” Sociology Professor Choi Hang-sub of Kookmin University said. “That, paired with Korea’s fixation on universities, means those who do not meet these social standards feel like they have no place in society.”

The point, however, isn’t that all recluses should be seen as potential killers or social misfits, but rather that there is a structural flaw in society.

“There has been a lot of talk about policies to support young adults in Korea in the last decade, none of which have effectively ameliorated their realities,” Choi said.

Social recluses also shouldn’t be generalized as potential criminals, according to researcher Kim.

“Most recluses choose to withdraw inward, taking their sorrows and anger into themselves instead of taking it out on others,” she said. “Recluses are all different but the violent ones that take action over their anger are very rare.”

Moving forward

“Step one to solving Korea’s social recluse problem is to get rid of the negative stigma surrounding the condition,” researcher Kim said. “That has to be established in order for these people to be able to seek help and for the government to craft appropriate policies for them.”

She added that it is not desirable to label isolated or reclused youths as “loners.”

“Grouping them this way further isolates them from society.”

The government in July began its first-ever comprehensive probe on young adult recluses at the national level.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare is currently amassing some 5,000 recluses ages 19 to 34 to participate in the survey that aims to get a better understanding of their needs.

“Based on the results, the ministry will begin a one-stop integrated pilot service to aid young social recluses next year,” the ministry said in a press release in June.

The survey runs through Aug. 31. More information can be found on mohw-kihasa.kr/youth-survey.asp

As for recluses Jun and Song, they are hopeful - not only for themselves but also for other young people in isolation in Korea.

“I think I am ready,” Jun said. “It took a lot of therapy for me and my family, but I feel like I can finally tell myself that I am good the way I am.”

Jun wants to catch up on the things he missed when he was 16, and perhaps pursue his childhood dream of becoming a poet.

Song now works as a mentor at Not Scary Company which provides support programs and co-living spaces for young recluses, and will get his social worker license in September.

“I always tell the recluses that it is not their fault,” he said, adding that all his advice stems from his own very painful yet uplifting experience of reclusion and coming out of it.

“Even if you feel like you can’t do anything right now - and that is fine too - you are absolutely capable."

LEE JIAN [lee.jian@joongang.co.kr]

korea joongAng daily

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[WHY] Why do many young adults choose isolation?

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