South Korea’s disadvantaged ‘dirt spoons’ rail against President Moon Jae-in

A generation of disenfranchised, despondent youths in the East Asian nation have all but given up on the idea of social mobility

They say the self-styled ‘reformist’ president, who came to power in 2017 on a platform of social and economic justice, has failed them

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Self-professed ‘dirt spoon’ Kim Jae-hoon drinks water in his tiny cubicle home in Seoul. Photo: Reuters

Published: 1:02pm, 27 Nov 2019Updated: 5:44pm, 27 Nov 2019

Hwang Hyeon-dong lives in a 6.6-square-metre (71-square-foot) cubicle near his university campus in Seoul, which comes with a shared bathroom and kitchen plus all the rice he can eat, that he rents for 350,000 won (US$297) a month.

The sparse rooms, in premises called goshi-won, were previously mostly used by less well-off students to temporarily cut off from the outside world while they studied for civil service job tests.

Now they are increasingly becoming permanent homes to young people like Hwang, who identifies himself as among South Korea’s the “dirt spoons”, those born to low-income families who have all but given up on social mobility.

“If I try hard enough and get a good job, will I ever be able to afford a house?” said the 25-year-old, who lives in his small, cluttered room where clothes were piled on the bed. “Will I ever be able to narrow the gap that’s already so big?”

Hwang Hyeon-dong in his 6.6-square-metre cubicle home in Seoul. Photo: Reuters

The concept of dirt spoons and gold spoons, as those from better-off families are known, have been around for many years but exploded onto the political scene in recent years, undercutting support for liberal President Moon Jae-in.