‘To Live as Who I Am’ for Korean Young Adults in Occupational Transition: A Narrative Inquiry on Crisis as a Liminal Experience and Thereafter
Authors:   Asia-Europe Perspective Association, Lee Ji-Hye , Lee Sun-Hae 
Published: December 2024

Bleak job prospects for young Korean adults have been the focus of Korean society in the last few decades. Multiple discourses have attempted to illustrate the harsh realities experienced by young adults and in spite of the differences in perspectives and foci, an overwhelming number of discourses portray these young adults as passive and helpless. Recently, the theme of mental health is being added to the discourses in recognition that many young adults seem to remain static after experiencing psychological crisis, which is concerning as it can contribute to an increased pathologizing of the young adults and their lives. A multi-faced in-depth understanding of their crisis experience is crucial to any effort to better assist them to cope with the psychological trauma obtained during this transition. This study thus aims to illustrate in the voice of young adults the psychological difficulties that these young adults are experiencing during occupational transition and their meanings within the Korean sociocultural context.
This study was conducted according to the procedure guided by the narrative inquiry method (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000). The authors utilized purposeful sampling method and recruited four unmarried young adults in their 20s and 30s who have gone through psychological crisis and had received pharmacological and/or psychological treatment. In-depth interviews were conducted with each study participants regard- ing their experiences before, during, and after the crisis. The interview data were constructed into two parts of research texts: telling and retelling.
The ‘telling’ part shows personal narratives of the participants, titled as ‘time to live on my own’, ‘my own way of living’, ‘searching for the detour’, and ‘another challenge’. The ‘retelling’ part identifies 15 common threads out of the personal narratives, categorizes them into work, relationships, daily life, and praxis, and highlights their meanings. The personal narratives confirmed the passive images of young adults in transition that are reflected in popular discourses on generation gap and personal deficit; at the same time, they shed light on the attempts of young adults who are determined to practice self-care to go one step further toward their preferred life.
On the basis of the above results, the authors recommended the followings in the conclusion. First, the traditional emphasis on identifying intrapsychic factors and/or attempts to correct symptoms could pose a risk of overlooking the sociocultural context of the difficulties young adults in transition are experiencing. Therefore, it is necessary for counselors to utilize alternative counseling models with post- modern and poststructuralist ideas in order to contextualize the client problem and facilitate the process of converting the client’s experience of crisis into one of acquiring knowledge and skills for themselves and their life. Second, authorities need to take a close look at the qualifications of the providers who are assigned for mental health counseling as being part of the job training/unemployment programs in the public sector. A continuing education should be made available to these providers to help them enhance the sense of social accountability and sensitivity to diverse life circumstances of their clients. Third, young adults need a platform on which they can act as active agents rather than passive users regarding their welfare. The role of communication mechanisms to include voices of young adults as stakeholders and feed them back to the scene of public policy and practice is essential.