As South Korea’s youth population becomes more indifferent to politics, The Postech Times asked an expert and a student for their takes.
Youth as Political Minorities in South Korea
(former Chair of the Special Committee on Youth Politics under the Presidential Commission on National Unity.)
In South Korea, young people are a political minority. A minority is not merely a group in a numerical disadvantage, but a group whose political and social influence is restricted within the power structure. The 22nd National Assembly has an average age of 56, with only 4.7 percent of legislators being in their thirties or younger. Considering that the average proportion of young parliamentarians across OECD countries stands at 17.5 percent, Korean youth occupy an extreme position of political under-representation in global comparison.
According to sociologist Rosabeth Moss Kanter, when a group becomes a clear minority within an organization, it undergoes a three-stage process of visibility, contrast, and assimilation. Members of the minority become highly visible at first, but soon their differences are accentuated, leading to exclusion from key decision-making processes. Ultimately, they conform to the dominant group’s norms and lose their distinctive identity. This theoretical framework aptly explains the dynamics within the South Korean parliament, where young legislators—initially welcomed for their visibility—are soon marginalized by the overwhelming majority of middle-aged and older lawmakers. Eventually, even these young representatives cease to advocate for youth interests, having assimilated into the dominant political culture.
The dominance of older politicians has given rise to what is known as gerontocracy, a system in which political power is concentrated in the hands of the elderly. Gerontocracy is not inherently problematic—Plato, for instance, proposed that wise elders above 50 should govern the polis. Yet in today’s advanced democracies, where life expectancy exceeds 90, the implications are different. The United States has also faced controversy over aging political elites: in 2023, Senator Mitt Romney declined to run for reelection, citing his age, while senior figures such as Mitch McConnell, Dianne Feinstein, and even Joe Biden, the former president of the United States, have faced public scrutiny for age-related health and performance issues.
The issue of gerontocracy goes beyond a simple matter of age. It concerns whether representative institutions truly reflect the diversity of age groups that constitute society. With an average parliamentary age of 56, zero lawmakers in their twenties, and only 14 in their thirties, South Korea’s political system remains trapped in ageism—a structural bias favoring the old. Consequently, South Korean democracy, despite decades of progress since democratization, shows clear signs of stagnation, unable to evolve into a system that genuinely represents all generations.
From Problem-Solvers to Agenda-Setters
: STEM Youth in Politics
(39th President of the Student Council, POSTECH)
People often say that “young people today are politically apathetic.” During my term as the 39th President of the Student Council at POSTECH, I heard this many times. Yet, standing between students and national politics, I came to believe the real problem is not indifference but a climate in which any engagement is immediately framed as “taking sides” in an endless fight.
Ahead of the 2025 presidential election, I worked with student leaders from STEM-focused universities to draft a joint science and technology policy proposal and delivered it to both ruling and opposition candidates. In Pohang, we invited former People Power Party leader Han Dong-hoon to campus, and in Seoul, we held a town hall meeting where students directly questioned presidential candidate Lee Jun-seok. At the National Assembly, student representatives from major universities joined members of the Democratic Party, the People Power Party, and the Reform Party in a legislative task force. From these experiences, I kept one rule: once a student leader enters politics, they must talk to all sides—otherwise they cease to be seen as a student and start to be treated as a politician.
Why, then, do many young people still avoid politics? Distrust is a major reason. Our generation often sees politics as a “divide-and-rule game” where any statement invites attacks from the opposite camp. There is also a clear generational gap: older voters tend to value loyalty to a single party or ideology, while younger voters decide issue by issue. To some, this looks inconsistent, but for many young people, it reflects a desire to judge policies on substance rather than on labels. Unfortunately, our political culture still treats such nuance as a lack of conviction instead of a different form of maturity.
For STEM students, politics can feel especially distant, yet the conditions under which we study and do research—funding, employment prospects, national R&D priorities, even dorms and cafeterias—are all shaped by political decisions. Turning away from politics does not mean politics turns away from us. The mission of a university like POSTECH cannot end with producing people who simply “study well.” If we are to become future leaders of the country, we must move beyond solving assigned tasks and learn to define the tasks that society itself has not yet clearly articulated. POSTECH students should grow into agenda-setters who frame problems, propose long-term visions for science and technology, and influence the policymakers who run the nation.
Engaging with politics, in my view, should not mean becoming a “fan” of any leader or party. It should mean applying the habits we use in the lab to the systems that shape our daily lives. The question is not whether young people are apathetic, but whether we can build an environment where STEM students can participate as independent partners in governance. If we do, youth participation will become a natural extension of how we already think, work, and aspire to lead.
