Lee says youth have become 'truly vulnerable generation' as failure now means ruin, not growth

President Lee Jae Myung said Friday that young people are being pushed into fierce competition by slow growth and shrinking opportunities, and that the state must expand the pool of opportunity through economic growth and craft policies that young people can actually feel — rather than simply demanding they work harder.

Speaking at the "Youth Budget Unboxing 2027" event at Cheong Wa Dae, Lee said the old adages of his youth no longer hold. "When I was growing up, sayings like 'hardship in youth is worth buying' and 'failure is the mother of success' were convincing," he said. "But if you say those things today, you'd better watch out for a slap. Failure can now be seen not as the mother of success, but as a shortcut to ruin."

Lee said anxiety runs deep among young people today. "There is a fear that if you fall once, you can never get back up — that you might spend your whole life in debt," he said. "In a low-growth society where opportunities have shrunk, competition itself has become not an enjoyable challenge but a source of pain, and friends have gone from rivals to enemies to be trampled in what feels like a war."

"Young people were once the most dynamic and hopeful segment of society, but now they have become a truly vulnerable generation — with the fewest opportunities, facing the greatest hardships, and the least understood," Lee said. "Before telling young people to try harder, it is the state's responsibility to build a society where effort is actually rewarded with opportunity."

Lee identified economic growth and the expansion of opportunity as the fundamental solution to the challenges facing youth. "The most important thing the government must do at this stage is grow the pie," he said. "We are concentrating all national capacity on turning a downward curve into an upward one, and we are seeing results as the growth rate has recently risen. Sustaining that is the government's role."

He also urged public officials to move away from a supplier-centered mindset and develop policies with real, tangible impact that young people can feel.

"Even when crafting a single policy, you must think of it as something affecting your own son or daughter and agonize over it hundreds of times," Lee said. "If we compare public administration to business, policy is the product and public outreach is the marketing. Just as our companies make world-class products, please create 'best-selling policies' that young people seek out and choose for themselves."

He added that older officials have the will but may not always be in tune with young people's needs. "When someone like me or the prime minister takes the lead, the motivation is there but the wavelength is often off," he said. "I ask our young public servants to take the lead and do your utmost alongside young people, so that their voices can translate into real policy change."