One in Three Personal Rehabilitation Applicants Is a Young Adult
Of the 96,722 people who applied for personal rehabilitation (a court-supervised program that restructures debt repayment) between January and July this year, 29,393 were in their 20s and 30s, accounting for 30.4 percent of the total. The figures, confirmed on the 24th through Court Administration Office data by Moon Jin-seok, a Democratic Party lawmaker on the National Assembly's Strategy and Finance Committee, show that the debt problem among young adults is growing ever more serious. According to the data, the 96,722 personal rehabilitation applicants from January to July this year amount to 65 percent of last year's full-year total of 149,112. Among them, 7,909 were in their 20s and 21,484 in their 30s, with the combined 29,393 applicants in their 20s and 30s making up 30.4 percent of the total. Last year, applicants in their 20s and 30s numbered 37,920, or 32.1 percent of the total.
Youth accounted for a similar share of debt adjustment procedures as well. Through the second quarter of this year, 97,199 people had their debt adjustments finalized, of whom 31,590 — 10,442 aged 29 or younger and 21,148 in their 30s — represented 32.5 percent of the total. Compared with the same period last year, the number of finalized cases rose 2.6 percent for those aged 29 or younger and 7.5 percent for those in their 30s.
Debt levels have also grown. Based on finalized debt adjustments, total debt held by people in their 20s stood at 315.6 billion won, while those in their 30s carried 1.1198 trillion won. Per-capita debt rose 1.9 percent from last year (29.65 million won) to 30.22 million won for people in their 20s, and increased 6.9 percent to 52.95 million won for those in their 30s.
Employment conditions are translating into debt. According to the August employment trends released by the National Data Agency on the 9th, employment among people aged 15 to 29 fell by 143,000, marking 46 consecutive months of decline. The youth employment rate in August stood at 44.1 percent, down 1.0 percentage point from a year earlier for a 28th consecutive month of decline, while the unemployment rate rose 0.5 percentage points to 5.4 percent — the highest for August since 2022. The economic activity participation rate fell 0.8 percentage points to 46.6 percent, the lowest for August since 2020. By contrast, overall employment in August reached 29.151 million, up 184,000 from a year earlier, and the overall employment rate hit 63.3 percent, a record high for the month of August.
Personal rehabilitation is available to those who have steady income but whose debts have grown so large that normal repayment is difficult. Moon Jin-seok said, "The indicators have improved thanks to the semiconductor boom, but young people are barely getting by on debt," adding, "We need a safety net to catch young people before they slip into delinquency, so that the warmth of growth reaches them as well."
