Lying flat or just resting? Asia’s Gen Z rejects the rat race

In a sunlit flat in southern Seoul, 25-year-old Cho Sang-hun sits before a glowing laptop, his future scrolling past in endless columns of job listings.

He is the product of South Korea’s finest schools, but as he weighs his future options uncertainty clouds his career search – as it does for the millions of young people across Asia who are quietly rewriting the rules of ambition.

“I can’t just go anywhere,” Cho said. “I have to comprehensively judge what job best suits me.”

Cho speaks with the calm detachment of someone who has spent years jumping through hoops: elite schooling, relentless extracurriculars, a parade of internships. Yet he still calls himself a “second-hand rookie” – a phrase Koreans have coined for graduates already worn down by the system before they even join it.

“Our parents’ generation could easily find a job at a large conglomerate if they graduated from university, regardless of whether or not they had prior experience,” he said.

Cho’s frustrations resonate with many young people across Asia, where mounting exhaustion is forcing a generational reckoning: has the promise that hard work and higher education guarantees a better life lost all meaning?