By the time Park Jun-ho, 26, completed his military service in late 2021, he knew the office life wasn’t for him. He dropped out of a computer engineering program at a technical college and began training in wallpapering — a hands-on trade that, to his surprise, proved both physically taxing and financially rewarding.
Now in his fourth year on the job, Park earns about 270,000 won (roughly $195) a day. Working around 25 days a month, he brings in between 6.5 million and 7 million won — more than twice the average monthly salary for employees at small and medium-sized businesses in South Korea. “It’s tough on the body, sure,” he said. “But I earn more than most people my age, and there’s real pride in seeing the results of my work.”
Park is part of a growing number of young South Koreans gravitating toward blue-collar careers — jobs that were once dismissed as “3D” work: dirty, dangerous, and difficult. Now, amid rising concerns about job automation and white-collar stagnation, these trades are being recast as reliable, high-paying paths with a future.
A recent survey by the hiring platform Catch found that 63 percent of 1,603 Gen Z respondents — those born from the late 1990s to early 2010s — held a positive view of blue-collar work. Just 7 percent viewed it negatively. Among the top reasons cited: high income (67 percent), lower risk of layoffs (13 percent), and reduced stress around overtime and promotions (10 percent).
For Seong, a 32-year-old tile worker in the greater Seoul area, the decision to change careers came in 2022, when he left his job as a children’s sports instructor and began working on construction sites — without any formal licenses. Today, he earns more than triple what he once did. “I still get scolded on-site, and I’ve got a long way to go before I’m a master,” he said. “But I take pride in the fact that this job won’t disappear. It gives me a clear direction.”
Among the 15 tile workers at his company, five are in their 20s or 30s — a noticeable shift from the industry’s aging workforce.
For others, the journey begins with part-time gigs. Lee Hyun-ho, 25, a university student in Daejeon, has taken short-term construction jobs three times, working on apartment complexes. He hauled materials, installed safety rails, and monitored pedestrian traffic — earning 150,000 won per day. Now preparing to apply for a production job at a major automaker like Hyundai, Lee said what he values most is the lack of customer-facing pressure. “You don’t get the same stress as in cafés or restaurants, where you have to deal with people all day,” he said.
With this growing interest, more young people are pursuing national technical certifications. According to the Human Resources Development Service of Korea, more than a third (35.2 percent) of those who earned tile technician licenses in 2023 were in their 20s or 30s. For wallpapering, that share climbed to 38.7 percent — and nearly 40 percent of those certified were women.
Even fields traditionally dominated by older men, such as forklift operation, are seeing a youth surge. Nearly half (48.2 percent) of new forklift license-holders last year were in their 20s or 30s. The qualification opens doors to jobs in logistics hubs, construction sites, and manufacturing plants — sectors still in need of human labor.
The rise of artificial intelligence is playing a pivotal role in this reappraisal. A report from the Korea Employment Information Service found that white-collar jobs are 5.49 percentage points more susceptible to AI replacement than manual trades. Office tasks like data collection, analysis, and evaluation are increasingly handled by algorithms. By contrast, physical trades remain difficult to replicate with machines.
“Young people today don’t view these jobs the way previous generations did — not as menial work, but as skilled, well-paid careers that offer a sense of purpose,” said Lee Byung-hoon, an emeritus professor of sociology at Chung-Ang University. “With fewer opportunities in the office and lower salaries, more young people are embracing trades as a new kind of dream.”
