By Chung Hyun-chae
Cable network tvN’s recent drama “Misaeng” (Incomplete Life) gained huge popularity among office workers by realistically portraying their lives.
It focused on a 26-year-old contract worker Jang Geu-rae, a high school graduate who eventually failed to be rehired as a regular worker.
As the drama depicted, it is harder for high school graduates to land jobs than those with college degrees. The government has pledged that the public sector would spearhead offering more job opportunities to the former, but public companies have actually reduced the number.
According to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance on Friday, 302 state-run organizations will cut their employment of high school graduates by 10.9 percent from 2014’s 1,933 to 1,722 next year.
The figure will account for about 10 percent of the total employment at the firms which includes college graduates.
The 2014 figure was also down from 2013’s 2,118
The former Lee Myung-bak administration had pledged to give more employment opportunities to high school graduates in an effort to ease excessive competition for college entrance and change the social atmosphere so that they could get decent jobs.
Under the plan, it increased the number of jobs at public organizations from 668 in 2011 to 2,034 in 2012 and 2,118 in 2013.
The initial goal of the policy was to ensure 40 percent of the people employed at public companies were only high school graduates.
Some criticize that the Park Geun-hye administration has shifted its focus from expanding high school graduate employment to creating jobs with more flexible working hours for women who have given up their careers for childcare.
The ministry said the decrease in the employment of high school graduates is a temporary phenomenon.
“We have been urging the companies to increase the portion of high school graduates to 20 percent and checking if they follow this,” a ministry official said.
But some beneficiaries are in doubt of the effectiveness of the policy.
“Most high school graduates hardly feel they are benefiting from the policy because only a small number of state-run companies are pressured to recruit them while others hire only college graduates,” a 19-year-old employee working at a state-run energy company said on condition of anonymity.