Young Koreans use ‘mental illness’ to turn dread into jokes

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“I’m about to get hit with ‘jeongbyeong.’”

For Kim, a 23-year-old college student, the phrase is almost always ready to roll off the tongue.

The word is short for the Korean term “jeongsinbyeong,” which literally means “mental illness.” But Kim was not making a blunt confession about having a psychiatric disorder.

“It is more of an expression for a sense of helplessness and anxiety — when the word ‘stressful’ does not quite capture the feeling,” Kim said.

Jung, another 22-year-old college student who said he often uses “jeongbyeong,” described it as a word that conveys a tangled psychological state: anger, anxiety, dread, depression and powerlessness all mixed together.

“About to get hit with jeongbyeong.” “Appearance jeongbyeong.” “Employment jeongbyeong.” Among young Koreans, the word mental illness has become a dominant shorthand for psychological strain and everyday stress.

It began as an offensive slur and at times drew criticism for being used in ways that demeaned people actually struggling with mental illness, but young people today increasingly use it to describe the feeling of being lost, anxious and cornered — often with a bitter smile at themselves. And by that measure, more and more seem to be diagnosing themselves with it.

A Naver search for “jeongbyeong” on May 11 shows multiple blog posts using the slang term. Captured from Naver

Young Koreans’ anxiety, condensed into ‘jeongbyeong’

The newly coined “illness” is often broken down into more specific labels depending on its cause. “Appearance jeongbyeong” refers to anxiety driven by obsessive concern over one’s looks. “Employment jeongbyeong” describes the burnout and despair caused by the pressures of job hunting. Other common diagnoses include “college entrance exam jeongbyeong,” “academic pedigree jeongbyeong” and “age jeongbyeong.”

Troublingly, the list of “conditions” appears to keep growing, and so is the speed of its spread, which seems have reached pandemic levels. According to Naver DataLab, a big data analysis platform, searches for “employment jeongbyeong” began rising in earnest late last year. “Appearance jeongbyeong,” which had appeared only sporadically around 2020, has also seen a noticeable increase in search volume recently.

Data from another big data analysis platform Sometrend showed that mentions of “job-seeking jeongbyeong” on blogs jumped 1,700 percent from a year earlier between April 10 and May 9, while mentions of “appearance jeongbyeong” rose 357 percent over the same period.

Instagram search results for “job-seeking jeongbyeong,” left, and “appearance jeongbyeong,” right / Captured from Instagram

Experts offer varying explanations for how young Koreans came to adopt the word to describe their psychological state.

Seo Jin-hwan, a professor of social welfare at Sungkonghoe University, said the expression appears to have spread naturally as more people in their 20s experience mental health issues and public discussion of mental health has become more common.

Statistics from the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service support that view. The number of depression patients in Korea rose 32.9 percent from 837,808 in 2020 to 1,106,603 in 2024. People in their 20s accounted for 17.5 percent of the total, the largest share among all age groups.

Meanwhile, Choi Hang-sub, a sociology professor at Kookmin University, traced the slang to a deeper sense of dislocation among young people.

“Compared with the past, young people are putting far more effort into college admissions, job hunting and other milestones, but the social rewards and opportunities they receive in return have not kept pace,” Choi said. “That leaves them with the experience of seeing what they have built up lose its value. In that gap between expectations and reality, a kind of anomie forms — and the accumulated sense of alienation and deprivation comes out in self-deprecating language.”

Vulnerability, wrapped in humor and self-mockery

Mental illness was once a taboo subject, difficult to bring up openly. So how did such a sensitive topic become a meme? Lim Myeong-ho, a psychology professor at Dankook University, explains it as part of young people’s play culture.

“Instead of using formal phrases like mental illness and psychological disorder, young people are using a new word, ‘jeongbyeong,’ to make it lighter. It is likely that the fun of using a new word along with a desire to follow others in using it played a part in the spread,” he said.

Some observers say the trend may also be linked to a generational tendency among young people to openly reveal their vulnerabilities. A report from Cheil Trends Lab analyzed Generation Z as having “active vulnerability,” a tendency to reveal their anxieties and flaws rather than hiding them. For a generation that grew up amid economic anxiety, rapid technological change and unpredictable global affairs, imperfection is not a flaw to be concealed, but a default setting.

“Jeongbyeong” meme images shared online. The image on the left was posted by @bdemgmr on X, and the image on the right by @masakinogi. Both posts recorded more than 5,000 reposts and 10,000 likes. Screenshots from X

College students say “jeongbyeong” works as self-deprecating humor, allowing them to share their psychological pain without making listeners feel uncomfortable or pressured to offer solutions.

“I often use it because I can express my pain without expecting much sympathy or a solution from the person I’m talking to,” Jung said.

Choi, 23, agrees. “I use the term when I want to share my feelings, but don’t want it to sound so urgent or painful that someone feels they have to help,” he said.

He added that talking seriously about his depressed feelings does little to solve the problems he faces.

The idea that “jeongbyeong” reflects a distinctive way young people express depression was also noted in a 2021 paper by An Soon-tae and Lee Hanna. In the paper, titled “An Exploratory Study on How and Why Young and Middle-aged Adults Disclose Depressive Feelings to Others: Focusing on the Influence of Perception of Social Norms,” the authors found that while middle-aged people tended to seek advice when talking about their depression, younger people were more likely to seek a sense of relief by telling others they were feeling down.

“It can be seen as a double bind: They are expressing their distress strongly enough to refer to their psychological state as an ‘illness,’ while at the same time signaling to others that it is not that serious and should be taken as a joke,” Seo said.

Or, he added, it may be that young Koreans have stopped expecting support in the first place, because they have not developed trust in a society that will stand by them when they are struggling.

Yoon In-jin, a sociology professor at Korea University, took a graver view of the trend.

“On the surface, it may look like resignation or giving up, but it also needs to be read as a kind of ‘silent scream’ emerging under excessive social pressure,” Yoon said.

Finding connection through ‘jeongbyeong’

The sense of relief that comes from voicing distress is another factor that should not be overlooked, according to Lim.

“Using expressions like ‘jeongbyeong’ can make people feel less psychologically burdened by the illness, as the term is softened through humor,” he said.

“For some, it can also bring comfort, as they realize they are not the only ones facing difficulties. There is catharsis in the act of disclosing one’s emotions itself, so using ‘jeongbyeong’ may play a small role in easing mild depression or stress.”

On online spaces, young people are actually seen sharing their sense of powerlessness and nervousness, exchanging both ‘jeongbyeong’ and empathy. Some studies also suggest that a sense of connection and solidarity can form as depression-related memes are shared.

According to a paper published in the international journal Scientific Reports by researchers from Sheffield Hallam University, the University of Oxford and Northumbria University, people with depressive symptoms were more likely to enjoy and share depression-related memes, and in doing so, cultivate a sense of social belonging and emotional support.

A short-form video from the Instagram account @i.hate.choijun shows the frustration of job hunting after multiple hiring rounds end in final rejection. The video uses the self-deprecating phrase, “half a year disappeared.” Captured from Instagram

An Instagram channel with 32,000 followers called “i.hate.choijun” is one example, turning the anxiety and burnout of job hunting into humorous videos.

In one video titled “The Person Always Next to Me at an Interview,” that person is portrayed as a graduate of a prestigious Seoul universitie with a 4.3 GPA and three internships at major companies. Another video jokes about six months vanishing while a job seeker goes through the hiring process. The videos, some of which have reached as many as 3.7 million views, have drawn comments filled with empathy and recognition.

“When I was looking for a job, my emotions were all over the place. Even the smallest setback could shake me,” said Seo Seung-min, the channel’s owner. “I felt ‘job-seeking jeongbyeong’ captured that state of mind better than anything else.”

“There is so much job-hunting content that is heavy and information-driven,” Seo said. “I wanted to make the process feel relatable and funny. Laughing it off, in itself, became a way of letting it out.”

When casual language dilutes the weight of mental illness

Some worry that “jeongbyeong” could trivialize psychological distress and weaken public understanding of the seriousness of mental illness. Lim said that although the term is now used as part of young people’s play culture, it still retains a slur-like edge toward people living with mental illness.

“They may not mean to mock anyone, but people who are actually suffering from mental illness are likely to hear it as an insult,” he said.

The discomfort has already surfaced online. Last December, a user on an online community for people with mental illness posted an article titled “Why ‘I’m about to get hit by jeongbyeong’ shouldn’t be taken lightly.”

“People don’t understand how that phrase comes across to those who actually live with mental illness,” the writer wrote.

Many commenters agreed. Some compared it to expressions like “X is giving me cancer,” while another likened it to the unease a parent of a child with ADHD might feel when the condition is casually used to mock certain behavior.

There is also concern that “jeongbyeong” may end up as a reflexive phrase for dodging the challenges in front of them. Seo said that calling something an “illness,” even jokingly, can shift the way young people understand ordinary stress.

“When everyday tasks that cause stress are labeled as an ‘illness,’ they can start to feel like problems that must be treated, rather than challenges to work through,” Seo said. “That can create the perception that overcoming them is no longer something they have to do themselves.”

Even among those who use the term, there is some unease over how widely it is being thrown around.

“As ‘jeongbyeong’ has come to be consumed like a meme, I think it has created a mood where people dwell too much on stress or difficult emotions, or express them in exaggerated ways,” said Choi, the student. “It also feels like the seriousness of actual mental illness is being taken more lightly.”

This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.