Factors Affecting the Happiness of Korean University Students

Abstract

As of 2020, in Korea, as 72.5% of high-school graduates go on to college and college period has an impact on the social development of Korean youth, it is very important to increase the sense of happiness of college students. However, there are new terminologies to express the situation in which how young people in Korea feel the difficulties in their lives, such as “Hell Chosun, 88-Dollar-Generation, N-Give-up-Generation, and Spoon-Social-Rank.” This chapter summarizes the factors related to the happiness of college students in South Korea, such as depression, interpersonal relationships, and self-efficacy, to suggest educational programs to promote the happiness of young people in Korea.

1. Introduction

Article 10 of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea proudly stipulates and guarantees the right to pursue happiness, stating that “everyone has the right to pursue happiness.” However, the reality is not so easy because young Koreans living in the flood of the word “happiness” do not feel happy. Statistics Korea [1, 2] surveyed and announced the happiness level of college students, and college students scored 6.1 points out of 10, lower than China with 7.5 points, the United States with 7.2 points, and Japan with 6.2 points. In Korea, welfare policies for young people are insufficient, and the social awareness that efforts should be made to increase the happiness of young people is relatively low [3]. The results of a survey conducted by Dong-A Ilbo and Job Korea on 607 young people aged 20–29 from March 5 to 19, 2021 found out how difficult times young people are having with depression and frustration amid the recent COVID-19 crisis. A total of 501 people (82.5%) answered that they usually experience depression or frustration, and 51.3% of them cited the difficulty in finding employment as the biggest reason.

As 72.5% of high-school graduates in 2020 [4] went on to university, most young people in their 20s in Korea can be said to be college students. However, young people using expressions, such as “Hell Chosun, 88 Dollar Generation, N-Give-up Generation, and Spoon Social Rank Theory” show a sense of despair rather than happiness. It is said to be the most prosperous economic environment since King Dangun (the legendary founder of Korea), but the reality that young people feel is not so [5].

“Hell Chosun” is a new Internet term in Korea that became famous in the 2010s [6]. It is a compound word of “Hell” and “Chosun,” meaning “Korea is close to hell and there is no hope at all.” It also has the meaning of “Korea is a bad country to live in, comparable to hell.”

The term 880,000 Won Generation is derived from the title of the book by Woo and Park [7] and is an expression that refers to the generation of young people who live or plan to live as non-regular workers. According to the authors’ analysis, in 2007, people earning about 880,000 won in their 20s were likely to become non-regular workers, so this term was given. This is a term that expresses the economic situation of Italian youth and is reminiscent of the novel “Thousand Euro Generation” (Milleuristi), published in 2005.

N-Give-up Generation is a neologism that refers to the generation of people who have given up N things. It started with the first 3-Things-Give-up generation and expanded to the “N-Things-Give-up generation.” 3-Things-Give-up generations are those who have given up on three things, dating, marriage, and childbirth, and 5-Things-Give-up generations are those who have given up on five things, including home and career [8].

“Spoon Social Rank Theory” refers to the idea that individuals in a country can be classified into different socioeconomic classes according to their parents’ wealth and income levels, and as a result, success in an individual’s life is entirely born from a wealthy family. This theory is believed to have originated from the famous English idiom “Born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth.” This means “to be born in a wealthy environment” or “to be born with good luck.” In the past, European aristocrats often used silver bowls, and nannies could use silver spoons to feed their children to know the wealth of the family [9].

Four out of five young people answered that they had ever thought of wanting to leave Korea. It is said that young people who should be the driving force for national growth and development want to leave the country where they were born and raised. This is the opinion of young people who account for 81% of the respondents [10]. Jeong et al. [10] surveyed 1003 young people aged 18 to 30 in 2017. The following is the reason why there have been times when you have thought of wanting to leave Korea (Table 1).

	Total	Gender
	Total	Male	Female
Competitive and authoritative social atmosphere	32.1	31.4	33.0
Anxiety about the future that does not seem to get better no matter how hard you try	24.2	22.0	27.3
Relative deprivation felt due to social polarization	14.7	14.7	14.7
Discriminatory practices based on academic background, gender, etc.	10.1	7.6	13.7
Total	81.1	75.7	88.7

Table 1.

Reasons for wanting to leave Korea (%).

Source: [10], p. 32.

University life was not easy due to COVID-19, etc., and finding a job is becoming more difficult. It can be said that it is a matter of national importance to improve the living conditions of college students during a special period and their happiness and satisfaction.

2. Living conditions of Korean university students

Looking at the change in the population aged 15–24 including college students in the “Special Estimate of the Future Population” of the Statistics Korea [2], the ratio continues to fall. It is expected to account for 12.7% of the total population in 2017, 11.3% in 2019, 9.1% in 2025, 8.6% in 2030, and 7.1% in 2050.

In 2020, the average sleep time for adolescents (9–24 years old) on weekdays was 8 hours and 20 minutes. The average sleep time for each age group on weekdays was 9 hours 13 minutes for 9–12 years old, 8 hours 4 minutes for 13–18 years old, and 8 hours for 19–24 years old. In 2020, the employment rate of the youth (ages 15–29) is 42.2%, and the unemployment rate is 9.0%. The employment rate by age group was 6.6% for those aged 15–19, 41.1% for those aged 20–24, and 67.6% for those aged 25–29. In 2020, the proportion of employed people in their 20s by occupation is 28.2% for professionals and related workers, 22.1% for office workers, and 15.2% for service workers. In 2019, the average wage of 20–24-year-olds increased by 7.7% from the previous year to 2,152,000 won, and the average wage of 25–29 years old was 2,583,000 won, 4.7% from the previous year. 64.0% of 19–24-year-olds had part-time work experience [4].

In 2020, the average weekly internet time for teenagers was 27.6 hours, and for those in their 20s was 29.5 hours. The main purpose of using the Internet is education and learning for teenagers and acquisition of data and information in their twenties. In 2020, adolescents (ages 9–24) responded that school life had changed negatively, and family relationships had changed positively due to COVID-19. In 2020, 46.0% of youth (ages 9–24) answered that their academic stress increased due to COVID-19. The 19–24-year-olds answered that they had the most troubles in the order of job (40.3%), study (16.9%), and physical and mental health (9.4%). Most of the 19–24-year-olds consulted with friends or colleagues (49.0%), followed by consulting with their mother (19.6%), and solving problems on their own (17.7%) [4].

3. Analysis of the effect on the happiness of Korean college students

As academic interest in happiness increased from the 1960s, scholars’ early attention focused on indicators, such as age, gender, ethnicity, income, residential density, and environmental pollution level as factors affecting happiness. However, sociodemographic variables have limitations in explaining the subjective happiness of individuals because the variance of these demographic factors to explain happiness is not very high, for about 15%, and happiness is subjectively experienced by an individual in life. Therefore, recently, studies on psychological factors that affect individual happiness have been actively conducted [11, 12].

In research on happiness, various terms like happiness have been dealt with depending on the researcher. “Subjective well-being” is a concept that reflects positive aspects as well as the absence of negative aspects. It is similar to the meaning of the reflected subjective well-being [12, 13].

As a sociodemographic factor affecting happiness, the degree of happiness was found to vary according to gender [14, 15]. Also, there are studies that economic level [16, 17], grade [18], etc., influence happiness. The level of happiness was different by health condition [15, 16] and by living area [17].

Korean young people go through a huge war for entrance exams and their quality of life is very low. According to data from Statistics Korea [4], the problem that 13–18-year-olds are most concerned about is “study and grades (46.5%),” indicating that academic stress is severe. Academic stress appears not only in Korea but also in all students living in Asian countries, such as Japan, Singapore, China, and Hong Kong, which have a culture that values achievement motivation highly. This phenomenon occurs because the amount of study is excessive and the expectations for academic results are high [19]. If this is because this period is ahead of the huge gateway of entrance exams for students, can college students who succeeded in entrance exams be relatively free from academic stress? If college students’ academic stress is not properly managed, their confidence is lowered and ultimately acts as a factor that negatively affects their sense of well-being [16, 20].

Another factor influencing happiness is interpersonal skills. Interpersonal relationships are a basic human need, and since the satisfaction of life is improved through the satisfaction of these basic needs, smooth interpersonal relationships are viewed as a key element of happiness [21, 22]. Interpersonal ability refers to the comprehensive ability of an individual to develop relationships with other people in his or her life in various areas. Lee et al. [23] and Jung [16] studied where the sense of happiness experienced by college students really comes from. When considering the aspects of relationships and happiness comprehensively, it was confirmed that the relationship with others, that is, the sense of bonding, is a factor that promotes happiness. Kwon [24] stated that college students had a high sense of self-efficacy in school life and friendly relationship with the state and that the higher the emotional support from the people around them, the higher the degree of feeling of happiness. From the above studies, being able to learn how to be interested in and relate to others plays an important role in being happy. In Lee’s study [12], “Strive for Relationships” is mentioned as a factor of college students to be happy and real response of a student is as below:

I cannot be happy alone. If life becomes meaningful and I am remembered as a precious being to others more than ‘I am precious to me,’ I think it will contribute to a successful and happy life. To do that, you need to form an amicable, prudent, and sincere human relationship (a student).

As a result of the study on the relationship structure between personality and happiness, there was a very close correlation between the relationship between personality and happiness. Among the sub-factors of the five personality factors, sincerity, openness, extraversion, and affinity were particularly closely correlated with happiness, and neuroticism was found to have a negative correlation [25]. Jun & Shin [5] investigated the influence of five personality factors (initiative, depression, consideration, accuracy, and judgment), which showed that depression is the most influencing factor that impacts negatively on the college students’ happiness, and initiative and consideration positively affect the happiness of college students. They used data from 5283 university students among 8485 data from the third year of the Korean Education & Employment Panel (KEEP) II [26] provided by the Korea Vocational Training Institute. In addition to personality factors, the study shows that self-understanding and self-efficacy are important factors affecting college students’ happiness.

Park & Lee [25] also gave the results that belief about one’s abilities affect happiness. The results of this study show that to enhance the happiness of college students, analyzing, understanding, and evaluating positively our personalities make our lives with more happiness. Many studies on happiness have revealed that there is a positive correlation between happiness and self-esteem [27, 28]. It has been shown that optimism influences happiness by directing one’s behavior and life direction in a positive direction. Lee [12] analyzed the students’ essays about how to try to be happy college students and the first category is “self-satisfaction and positive thinking.”

4. Research on life satisfaction of college students

Life satisfaction is an important factor for a healthy life. In the context of Korea, the satisfaction of college students¹ after completing severe entrance examinations is important for healthy college life, academic achievement, and successful career development. The construct of “satisfaction with life” represents the cognitive component of subjective well-being [30]. Pavot and Diener [30] defined life satisfaction as “a judgment process in which an individual evaluates his or her quality of life based on his or her own criteria.” Hence, evaluation of life satisfaction is based on a cognitive appraisal of the overall quality of a person’s life, based on self-selected standards [31].

Studies report that demographic variables (e.g., gender and socioeconomic status) appear to play a very modest role in relation to life satisfaction in adolescents [32]. Studies that have found gender differences generally report that boys score higher on life satisfaction than girls [33]. Life satisfaction is a central construct in relation to other emotional, social, and behavioral constructs [32]. There is a moderate effect of socioeconomic status, including income and educational level, on life satisfaction [34, 35].

Among the factors influencing life satisfaction, there are self-concept and self-esteem, especially for adolescents and early adult college students. According to Dubois and Tevendale [34], self-esteem is a psychological vaccine that can protect against all kinds of developmental problems [34]. Indeed, many studies on self-esteem have shown that it significantly affects life satisfaction and mental health [35]. The self-concept is an individual’s view of oneself and is called self-esteem. In other words, self-esteem is an individual’s judgment of how valuable “I am.” One of the self-concepts is a sense of self-identity in which one realizes who they are, and it has been reported that those whose self-identity is not established have a higher score for depression [36]. The relationship between self-esteem and depression has been extensively studied in health research over the past decade [37, 38]. Self-esteem, depression, and self-identity are closely related to each other.

Depression is another critical issue in the lives of college students. Depressed college students feel low self-worth and negatively evaluate themselves, which damages their self-esteem. Depression refers to a state of mind that has a negative impact on the overall daily life from thinking, attitude, perception, and cognition to interpersonal relationships. Depression is accompanied by various psychological problems, and painful emotional reactions, such as frustration, guilt, worthlessness, loneliness, and hopelessness, leading to negative and pessimistic thoughts, and furthermore to self-deprecation and suicidal thoughts, where they consider themselves incompetent, inferior, and worthless [39]. Depression experienced by college students varies from mild depression to severe psychotic conditions that interfere with their daily lives [37, 38, 39].

Low socioeconomic status (SES) has been found to be associated with a higher prevalence of depression. According to a meta-analysis conducted by Lorant et al., a low socioeconomic status was found to be related to the prevalence of depression [40]. In a study on the association between depression and socioeconomic status in Korea, Cho et al. reported a result from a nationwide sample analysis that was like those of the previous studies in foreign countries [41]. Kang and Ji [42] categorized self-efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience as positive psychological capital, and all were found to be factors affecting depression. Among the four factors of positive psychological capital, self-efficacy was found to be the most influential factor. From these results, the lower the self-efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience, the higher the perception of depression among college students.

It is necessary to pay attention to the positive psychological state of trying to solve the current difficulties and look at the future with a positive perspective. Positive psychological factors refer to a positive psychological state of an individual to perform well in each task and achieve successful results [43]. It is not innate but can be changed with effort, so it is a psychological factor that changes an individual’s attitude and affects behavioral results [43]. Therefore, if a positive psychological state is maintained, we can be mentally and physically healthy and achieve the expected performance in the work given to us [44]. On the other hand, there is a need to decrease the negative psychological state.

Jun and Jung [29] identify the factors affecting life satisfaction of Korean college students, using the data from the Korea Children’s Youth Panel Survey (KCYPS) conducted by the Korea Youth Policy Institute. The KCYPS was conducted in 2010 to identify the growth and developmental patterns of children and adolescents. A total of 7071 samples from 16 provinces including first-year students, fourth-grade students, and first-year students at middle school were selected using multi-level cluster sampling method. In this study, there were first-year college students in 2016 who were first-year middle school students in 2010. Among the 2351 samples extracted, the last 1220 questionnaires were used for the final analysis, excluding the missing questionnaires in the questionnaire response related to this study.

The demographic characteristics of the survey subjects are 575 (47.1%) male and 645 (52.9%) female students. Looking at the family’s economic level as reported by the college students themselves, 233 (19.1%) have good living, 781 (64.0%) were average, and 206 (16.9%) answered not good enough. Stepwise multiple regression analysis was conducted to analyze the effects of positive and negative psychological variables on life satisfaction. There are four factors (self-esteem, ego-resilience, self-identity, and life satisfaction) in the category of positive domain and four factors (attention deficit, aggression, depression, and social withdrawal) in the negative domain.

First, the level of explanations of self-esteem, attention deficit, and depression was 46.5% (r2 = 0.465), and this regression model was statistically significant (F = 353.866, p < 0.001). To grasp the relative influence, the standardization coefficients were found to be depression (−0.338), self-esteem (0.302), and self-resilience (0.174). The higher the level of self-esteem and self-resilience, and the lower the degree of depression, the more influence on life satisfaction. Tolerance and VIF statistics were checked to identify multicollinearity problems. As a result, the tolerance value was less than 1.0, the VIF value was less than 10, and the Durbin-Watson value was 1.912, which was close to 2 so it did not have the problem of multicollinearity (Table 2).

		B	SE B	â	t	p
(Constant)		1.640	.157		10.437	.000
Life Satisfaction	Self-esteem	.384	.037	.302	10.411	.000
Life Satisfaction	Depression	−.355	.029	−.338	−12.374	.000
Life Satisfaction	Self-resilience	.255	.036	.174	7.129	.000
R^2 = .466 ∆R^2 = .465 F = 353.866(p = .000)

Table 2.

Factors affecting the increase of life satisfaction of college students by multiple regression analysis.

The life satisfaction of college students was negatively related to depression, and depression was closely related to aggression. To increase life satisfaction, depression is reduced. At this time, as a program to reduce depression, self-esteem or self-resilience can be increased. Rosenberg [45] defined self-esteem as an individual’s set of thoughts and feelings about his or her own worth and importance. This definition reflects the notion of “global” or “general” self-esteem or self-worth. Self-esteem is a large part of college students’ self-understanding and is likely to be a fluctuating and dynamic construct, susceptible to internal and external influences during early adulthood. According to Pavot and Diener [30], both self-esteem and life satisfaction indicate one’s global evaluations. As in previous studies, when this study found out that self-esteem is the factor that mostly affects the life satisfaction of university students, in the future, universities will be able to develop and proceed with programs to increase students’ self-esteem.

Student’s college period is an intermediate stage of transition from childhood to adulthood, and various experiences are made according to the developmental changes. In addition, it is known that internalizing problems, such as depression, anxiety, and social withdrawal, and externalizing problems, such as aggression and delinquency, occur when the developmental task is not successfully performed during the development process [46]. In other words, it is predicted that the internalizing problem behavior of social withdrawal in college students directly affects the externalizing problem behavior of aggression and lowers life satisfaction [47].

5. Conclusion

How will the youth living in Korea be expressed? Most people fully project the positive image of the word youth. It is thought that young people should be full of challenges and passion, and the young people themselves are familiar with words, such as passion, ambition, will, and youth. However, the way young Koreans are living is very different from the positive image we have in mind. Negative words, such as “loser,” “work-worm,” “consumables,” “sigh,” and “in the same place” were suggested [10].

Korean university students are currently going through difficult times due to low employment rates amid many social turbulences. Most of them prepare for employment during 4 years of college, and they have a lot of preparation period after graduation. To improve the employment rate of university students, the government reorganizes the university curriculum and policy to foster departments with good employment opportunities.

Research on happiness was hardly studied before 2000, and it started to increase rapidly around 2000. This trend can be said to reflect the social reality around 2000 when Koreans were interested in well-being and focused on efforts and methods to be happy. However, as studies on happiness are still focused onto confirming relationships of variables, there is a limit to the role of research on happiness in helping people more accurately understand happiness and promoting happiness. To make happiness a reality for people and help people live a happy life, the study of happiness suggests, based on the existing research results, what factors should be interested in to become happy and how best to work to promote those factors [12].

Young people living in the twenty-first century want to make a living doing what they love. Nearly 30% of young people answered that they have a successful life when they are doing what they love, that is, self-actualization and self-fulfillment. A happy and harmonious family (27.2%) ranked second, and economic success (22.9%) ranked third. We hope that our country will become a country where college students and young people become happy.