“Everything in my life is controlled, living is becoming too expensive. I have no dreams. My only joy is thinking about dying.” Ji-woo, nineteen years of age.
It seems, especially to older generations, the youth are giving up. A malaise and wider apathy has taken hold among the younger generations of East Asia. In China it has been called, Tang Ping, or ‘Laying Flat’. In Japan, Hikikomori, or ‘Pulling Inwards’ and in South Korea, they have become known as the N-po generation or ‘Resting Youth’. It’s not that these sentiments are exclusive to East Asia, or any particular laziness found inside a younger generation who, some may accuse of being spoiled or without ethics. The world, it turns out was a lie. The promises and expectations of the past are now distant and unattainable for many younger people, no matter how hard they study, work or ‘push’, the effort and sacrifice does not offer reward or security.
“What is the point to living?” – Li, twenty-four years of age.
All three nations and cultures have over come a 20th century marred by war, imperialism, political turmoil and tragedy. It was with extremes of authoritarianism to tremendous amounts of borrowing, investments and innovations that saw an improvement and social ascent. The three nations by the end of the 20th century became economic powerhouses, business and industries thrived. The standard of living improved across all metrics. With hard work, the rewards was a comfortable life, financial stability, even wealth and material prosperity. The cultures of working and studying long and hard provided, for a time.
Then, economic collapses through the 1990s and into the 2000s saw a pattern of instability and what growth did occur was not as wide spread as was promised. Or, the hard work was never going to pay off. The destruction and misery that their parents bought home, divorce, and alcoholism. Or, in Japan’s case and early reliance on amphetamines to help promote study and work rate, all slowly took the toll. Mixed in with the financial dissatisfaction, growing costs of living, wider surveillance and censorship the only protest and act of defiance was to give up. To no longer act as a tax cow, or a cog in the wheel.
Perhaps the escapist seductions of video games and anime may have in part provided some of the youth with a coping means. Whereas, living from inside small bedrooms, or on the streets seldom offered much luxury or opulence, some have expressed a sense a freedom inside the minimalist and ‘do less’ approach. While bed rot, doom scrolling and gaming for hours is hardly healthy for the mind or body, neither was working endless hours in corporate offices, factories or for the government.
Absent among many of the youth are any pretences of wider ideological declarations. It’s not a socialist call for the proletariat or down trodden. There is no whispers of ‘Going Galt’ or anarchist decrees. Instead, it’s an inevitable acceptance and perhaps, surrender for the inheritors of a world abused and exploited by those who came before them. Every grandiose public works expedition, however it may be seen as an investment, is not only paid for my those at the time, but the future generations. Inflationary debasement of currency, having everything turned into a speculative investment so that it becomes too expensive for the yet to be born to even enter the market, layers upon layers of rules and regulations all to prop up careers and jobs of those who produce nothing, who only exist to rent seek or extract from the energetic and productive takes it’s toll. And it is a toll.
It is the most putrid marriage of capitalism and government, wherever the chimes for benevolence, there are always those who profit and prosper from the power and enforcement of laws and regulations which protect elites and the corporate and government class. It’s an exploitation with it’s own putrid social contract of nationalism along with the Confucianism that lingers inside of many Asian cultures. The importance of social harmony and virtue, familial responsibility all of which obligate the individual into earning and providing and never speaking up, acting up against the system or power. The embers of Taoism lingers and struggles to thrive in an age of corporate and government imprisonment and power. Among the youth is a soft dissent, not student protests who defied the State at Tiananmen Square in 1989, or those gunned down in the 1980 Gwangju massacre, or the extremists like the Japanese left-wing terrorists of the 1960s and 70s.
“We give up. There is no shame in giving up on a lie.” – Hinata, Twenty-one years of age.
Some hard line advocates from within government or older social critics will blame the dejected youth for their situation. The claims that they need to work harder, or should be like the past generations is an out of touch reflection of the disparity between then and now. While most generations boast and bemoan of the past they once had, they have in turn done everything to deny the youth and yet to be born those same very experiences. Whether this is done through debt or laws which have destroyed the world often nostalgically recollected upon, that has long gone. Though, their pensions and investments were built on the memories of that past, what was once an optimistic playground is now a graveyard never to be experienced by the young.
The fascist or nationalist inclination is to adhere for a greater good argumentation, the youth owes society servitude. Job Corp type of programs to take the unemployed and force them into public works, conscription or even a Hitler Youth to instil, values and work ethic. The servitude to State and society an oblation they have inherited from those who now deny them any freedoms or space to breathe. And, what values may have been of importance to the past, no longer matter to those who can through their own experiences and the screens in their hands see a different world. One of betrayal and deceit. Lies layered upon debt and corruption. Law, on law and more all of which constrains life to the point that the only dignity that remains is, to lay flat.
“We are told to work hard and be obedient. My parents are unhappy, every one I know is unhappy, but we are told to be like them. We have no happiness only work and obligations to things we do not understand or believe in. I wish to remain in my bed and stay here.” Mingze, twenty-three years of age.
Or, in a more disturbing prevalence is found in the higher suicide rates, especially in South Korea. The dreary misery of modern life, and it’s many hedonistic trappings has also seen a destruction in the will of the youth to live on. In China adolescent suicide rates have increased since 2017, with under 25’s seeing higher self harm and death rates due to depression. Specific regions in China had an increase in suicide despite previously a period of decline. Older adults have also seen rising rates of suicide, especially among academics. The Covid-19 responses from governments saw an increase in the depression and suicide rates. For Japan there had been a decline from 2009-2019, with now an increase among women and adolescents. A lack of social interactions and an increase on reporting by all forms of media has been suggested for the increase.
For South Korea, suicide has overtaken cancer as the leading cause of death for those in their 40s. Nearly half of all death in Korean teenagers is due to suicide. The excessive study culture and structure of society around employment in major corporations or government has been viewed as one of the main causes along with financial pressures. All of which leads to depression and other health declines. Young people who do what is demanded of them, experience a lack of sleep, for high school students only a few hours a day. A day of study cram sessions, school itself, tutoring and night school, all of which is expected so that the student may gain the grades needed for higher education or employment in high paying careers. The nation has wrapped it self around it’s obsession with school, to the point that traffic and commercial flights are co-coordinated with exam time tables so the students have less outside noise during. The fixation with formal education has destroyed their youth and empowered the government and institutional cabals which now control South Korea with a dystopian power matrix. Families are obsessed and dependent on both to the point that childhood has been ruined.
“All day is school, all night is school. We sleep in minutes at a time, on the way to school, on the way home from school. We barely eat because that time can be used for sleep. We must study and learn. I can not taste any more or even see properly, I must study and I hate every minute of my day.” Kim – Eighteen years of age.
These pressures in conjunction with a world that is different to what their parents were born into reveals a life where there is little optimism on the horizon. Just survival and a maze with no exit. The maze itself only exists to satisfy power and those who built it, so that they may build more of it for them to profit. With a decline in birth rates, or in China’s case a prohibition on children for a period, the age demographics have become shattered inside these nations. A global trend has also shown a wariness towards having kids and building a family, many reasons have been given by those who are shying away from having a family of their own. The critics will claim it’s simply selfishness. To disregard genuine fears and concerns not to mention stresses and fears dismisses complications that now exist for those coming up. Wider pollutants, from food to clothing and medications may also play a part in the inability or lack of desire to have kids. It’s likely to be a culmination of causes, here the philosophical reasons are at forefront.
In China, many with higher educations and previously impressive careers have switched to delivery driver and labouring jobs where they work just enough for food and rent. For Japan school truancy and general homelessness has taken on it’s own sub-culture along with the 80-40’s where elderly parents have adult children living with them indefinitely is becoming more widespread. Thousands of people a year, ‘disappear’ whether they leave jobs and family to simply live a nomadic and simpler life as another identity has become a cultural phenomena, especially in Japan. Not unique to the East Asian nations but some youth are now staying at home with their parents to be their domestic servants, cooking and cleaning as payment for food and board.
The emergence of ‘stall style streaming’ or homeless streamers is a display of technology and busking merging, as young people line the streets and under urban covers where they face screens to sell their personalities or perform acts for donations. Across Asia are those who are called ‘rat people’, who essentially compete to do the least and they show it online. The new flex inside of the online subculture is to be as lazy as possible, where the only movements is to doom scroll or order food to be delivered and then eaten. Some influencers have began to derive income from this anti-work, work. Then again, many would argue that as arduous as it may be, counting to one hundred thousand should not lead to becoming the most viewed person on the planet and one of the wealthiest influencers, and yet Jimmy Donaldson proved it. So online, nearly anything is possible and regarded.
“People pay us to do things or they may just enjoy the things we already do. It is like panhandling but we don’t limit ourselves to strangers walking near, instead we can stream and wait for donations. It is how many of us survive, I talk about my day and sometimes I am paid by regulars and strangers. Often the people watching are inside of their bedrooms and have not left their bed in days and we are the only people they will see. It is not a friendship but it is a bond of lonely sadness.” – Yan, Twenty years of age.
Living in the screen is more than a life style, it has influenced how people relate and perceive themselves. This is not exclusive to Asia, it’s the world. Korea is often heralded for it’s beautiful people, the dark secret is in the extremes of plastic surgery and an obsession with artificial aesthetics which has led to numerous deaths and injury. The dissatisfaction with one self and expectations to look a certain way, the filtered self, or like anime or K-pop stars, has caused many to change their features. If they succeed, it’s rewarded. If they fail, they die or look worse for it. Ghost surgeons and all forms of abuse occur in the overloaded clinics and surgeries. The demand is so high. Younger generations have become fixated with their avatar in the screen, and how fictional human depictions are presented that they are willing to destroy themselves. In it’s own form the looks maxing trend among fitness and body shape standards for men and women have changed thanks to social media and the filters or doctoring of images.
The trends and variations of living occurring in the East Asian nations is an unsettling dystopian future which will infect much of the wider world. While, the soft power projection of all three of these nations through pop culture such as music and television to smart industries depicts ‘futuristic’ Utopias. For many living in the societies, it is anything but Utopian. The difference between Utopia and Dystopia tends to be perspectives and while many will read Orwell or Huxley with trembling concern, there are those who see such fictions as templates by which to improve their own personal living upon. Off course, always for the greater good. It seems the same is occurring now.
South Korea is freer and more preferable than the North. The China of today is better than when it was ruled by warlords, bandits and foreign imperialists, or during the bloody peak of Maoism. Just as Japan is much better now than it was under the militarist, and especially during it’s 20th century war years. That does not mean they are places for optimism or promise for many of the youth, debt and unstable currencies always end poorly. Not to mention, the march towards greater censorship and laws is a return to those authoritarian periods, just with more technology for the rulers and exploiters. If young people are born to be exploited, expected to wipe the asses and pay taxes and serve the older generations or elites, what comes next when they are exhausted out of having their own families, let alone see no optimism for a future. What bleak escapism they may enjoy now in time to be denied.
If there is a collapse of such economic systems, locally or globally, the usual responses is to kick the can down the road. Stimulus to protect the very institutions and power elites who tinkered the system into failure. Inflation and debt, for ever? If everything has no value, then what is the value to anything? This is the question many of the youth are asking. One thing that will always have value, is time. And if they refuse to surrender their time to those who will pay for it with money that has no value, or is debt, then the price is not worth it.
While the three East Asian nations share complex histories, much of it twisted from war, their youth share a solidarity of sadness linking them in ways that no previous generation or policy makers could ever have hoped. Unfortunately, that commonality is consequence of policies and systems imposed upon them, which benefit some while punishing many, especially the young, into a state of indentured subscriptions or corporate peasantry. While they live in safer and more abundant times to those in the distant past, it’s now a cyberpunk dystopia which can be prevented through more choice and liberalism, freedoms, rather than dependencies on hierarchies of government, corporations and traditions which serve to exploit and control rather than allow for individuals to flourish. Or aspire. Or, to dream. The exhaustion and despair that has caused the ‘laying flat’, is not going to be solved through disregard or more of the same, it is also not going to remain contained within those nations. It will, and in some ways has spread.
The cost of living is one aspect to it, the censorship, prohibitions and surveillance along with the regulatory capture which favours corporations or pushes people into contracting for the government or working inside of it. This may suit some, it is the opposite of the ambition for others. The irony is that so much prosperity was achieved through entrepreneurship and the creativity found in co-operation and individuals all of which have become deterred or homogenised into a social soup. The simple realisation for the creative and energetic is to simply give up, to lay down and rot in bed. If the world refuses to allow for such energy and creative ambition, then shame on it. Soon, that world will die because of such a firm stance and hubris and no amount of automation or artificial intelligence will fix that. Korea, Japan and China are in many ways ahead of the rest of the world, for better and worse. In this case worse, soon this despair will be afflicting the youth of the West. It’s the cost of turning everything into an investment, regulating all aspects of life, drowning the world in debt, debasing currencies and prohibiting, perhaps happiness itself. Maybe even living. Or, that will be a subscription payment too, taxes included.
“It means to give up on life goals. Sampo is to give up on marriage and dating. Opo means we will never own a home or have good careers. Chilp is to give up on hope itself and any friendships or relationship within the family, and Gupo and Wanpo means to not worry about being healthy or happy. To not be and look beautiful. That’s what we have given up on.” – Min-seo, twenty-two years of age.
