After the work of staying alive, and a 2019 count that stayed under two hours

Leisure, the essay says, has travelled with human history. The work of staying alive was once hunting and gathering; now it is the many forms of work that bring in money. After that effort, a person needs rest — to put back strength, to ease a tired body, and to loosen tension so the next stretch can be met. Leisure is what fills that interval, and it is needed at every age, though it looks different in each. In earlier, harder years in Korea, getting a living came first; as the society grew less poor, interest in leisure rose. The pages then turn to Korean young people.

Korea’s zeal for education, the writer says, is very high. Many parents spend heavily on private tutoring, and the common day runs from school to an academy or a reading room late into the night. In that weather, a proper rest is hard to keep. The essay cites figures from Statistics Korea and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, as they were reported in a Yonhap piece by Lee Dae-hee on 1 May 2019. Among elementary, middle, and high-school students, one to two hours of leisure a day was the most common span; cases with less than two hours came close to half — 44 percent in the headline. The activity that most filled the hours after school was private tutoring, 73 percent in that report, and the share rose with the grade. More than 70 percent said they studied for a future self; there was, the writer thinks, little room left to ask which ability or gift that future might actually need. Those counts are left in 2019, not treated as a later official total.

A 2012 afternoon in Hamburg, and rooms still being planned in 2019

The shortage looks sharper, the writer says, when another country is set beside it. The comparison is drawn from Park Jun-ha’s 1 October 2012 article in the Ewha university newspaper, in a series on walking a leisure road. In that account, German schools had no afternoon lessons, so the day often ended in the morning and the rest belonged to the student. Many went to sports centres, or followed a hobby. A library for the young was less a quiet room of textbooks than a place to do things; a youth space in a Hamburg public library, the article said, held games, films, music, and board games. That is the 2012 picture the essay uses, not a later official description of German schools.

The writer also worries about the range and quality of what Korean young people can actually do. A strong games industry may play a part, but the deeper lack, in this view, is of things to do and of a school system that would encourage them. From teachers and from parents the word is often “study”; a pursuit that is not study is met with “never mind that, just work at your books,” or “what if it gets in the way?” The places named as typical — a PC bang, a game room, a noraebang — feel, to the writer, too few. What is needed, the pages argue, is support at a social scale.

Some local plans are held up as a better turn, and they are left in the year they were reported. A 26 April 2019 Asia Economy article by Park Jong-il describes Jungnang-gu’s plan, under the heading of study-life balance, to create six dedicated community spaces for young people by 2021, shaped around what they asked for, with rest, play, and counselling, and with rooms for making video or rehearsing a performance. The district head, as quoted there, wanted to shift work that had centred on supporting study toward helping young people grow a wider range of gifts. A 21 November 2019 piece by Choi Dae-yeol in Daejeon Internet News reports the opening of Sejong’s Goun Youth Center, with a recording room, a dance studio, and a game room among the spaces to be offered, along with career education, counselling, and a chance to try a job, and a then-stated aim to expand youth facilities to nine sites by 2027. The essay also names Ulsan, Seosan, and Namhae as preparing rooms of a similar kind, a movement it saw widening at the time.

A wish for film and sport at school, and a habit of mind that still prefers the desk

The writer takes the shortage of time, and the stress that comes with a heavy load of study, as a social problem. A survey is cited in which thoughts of suicide tied to schoolwork or grades appeared at a high rate, and in which not wanting to study was the most common reason given for wanting to leave school. No year and no figure for that survey are given in the core, so none are added here, and it is not treated as a later official total. Such tension, the writer says, gets in the way of a steady feeling and a clear thought, and leaves a person complying passively with what society asks, instead of looking for a path in the years when that looking matters. Gifts go undeveloped; the waste, in this view, is also a national one.

What has to change first, the writer thinks, is a habit of mind. The high zeal for education rests on a belief that good study leads to a good job and to what is called success. That belief was fed by a social fact of the 1970s and 1980s, when a university place often led to a good post, and it has older roots in a long respect for learning — the civil-service exam, the scholar. From that comes, the writer says, a mistaken ranking in which physical work and skill are treated as lower, and the familiar parental advice: study hard, so that you will not have to do work that is hard on the body. That ranking, in this view, is the largest obstacle to trying more than one path. The writer wants the media and television to show another culture, in which developing a gift is taken as seriously as a good mark, and in which many kinds of work can be equally respected.

The second need is leisure that helps a person find an aptitude, offered at a social scale. Because so many hours go to study, there is little time to learn what one actually wants, or does well, or prefers; many people, the writer says, study hard and only later pick a university to match a score. That, too, is read as a waste of people. If a school made programmes in film, performance, and sport a regular part of the day, and then offered counselling and support to those who showed a gift, leisure and a first look at a path could arrive together. The writer hopes for a society in which Korean young people, who live under so much strain, are given enough leisure, and programmes of a real quality, to live a little more happily. The same Korean essay, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. A class essay on the idea of leisure and on the leisure of Korean young people, with comparisons and local plans as the writer cites them.
2. Lee Dae-hee, Yonhap, 1 May 2019, “2019 youth: 44 percent of students with under two hours of leisure a day… 73 percent in private tutoring…,” and figures the essay also ties to Statistics Korea and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, left in that 2019 reporting.
3. Park Jun-ha, Ewha university newspaper, 1 October 2012, “Walking a leisure road (2): Germany, coming out of school,” including the Hamburg public library as described there.
4. Park Jong-il, Asia Economy, 26 April 2019, on Jungnang-gu’s plan for youth community spaces and study-life balance; Choi Dae-yeol, Daejeon Internet News, 21 November 2019, on the opening of Sejong’s Goun Youth Center and a then-stated expansion toward nine sites by 2027.

Last updated: 14 November 2026