In Korean society, the issue of young people is primarily explained through two images: young people who stay indoors, disconnected from society, or adults who have failed to achieve independence. However, between these two lies a far more colorful reality. ‘Youth who have left home’ are one part of that. There are young people who chose to leave home as a survival strategy due to repeated domestic violence, economic exploitation, and control and abuse.
Forced Independence for Survival: A Blind Spot of Family-Centered Systems
Some may ask this: “I understand that the situation was difficult, but aren’t they adults now? The difficulty of becoming financially stable after leaving home is something most young people who become independent go through.” But this statement misses a critical premise: for young people who have left home, independence is closer to a forced separation that begins in a state stripped of care, relationships, and safety.
Young people cut off from their family of origin work without rest to sustain their livelihoods, yet their housing remains perpetually unstable. They have almost no one to rely on when they are sick. Moments in which they have to repeatedly explain their circumstances even in ordinary conversation continue, and relationship fatigue accumulates.
[Image of youth who left home © Unsplash]
Then why have young people who left home — a group that should have been addressed at the institutional level, beyond individual choice — been so invisible? The reason can be found in the fact that the basic premise of the administrative system still rests on the family. In the contradiction of being severed from their parents yet still administratively bound to them, young people who left home are pushed outside the system.
The various youth support systems operated by the government are also often designed based on parental income or consent, making it easy for these young people to fall into blind spots of welfare policy. After leaving home, their lives continue with the universal protection and support of their family of origin cut off, and with the institutional protection of the state also failing to function smoothly. It is a continuous stretch of time in which the individual must bear economic and emotional responsibilities and risks entirely alone.
[Canada’s Housing First for Youth (HF4Y) © Homelessness Learning Hub]
The HF4Y model in Canada asks young people who have left home this question: “Do you have a safe place to stay tonight?” Because when housing is unstable, no form of independence can be sustained. This model first provides housing as the starting point of recovery, then, at the next stage, integrates support for mental health, education, employment, and social recovery. It is a method of first establishing the minimum conditions that make independence possible, before demanding proof of qualifications.
The one-stop youth centers in the United States also depart from the same recognition of the problem. The issues of housing, medical care, legal assistance, counseling, and employment that young people who left home face are intertwined with each other, yet under existing systems, they had to visit different service windows for each. The one-stop centers view this structure itself as a problem and are designed so that related support services are connected in a single space, ensuring that young people do not have to repeatedly explain their harm and deprivation.
The Conditions Preceding Youth Independence
These two overseas cases overturn the existing perception surrounding independence. Until now, independence in South Korean youth policy has primarily been understood in terms of employment and income. However, these policies take as their starting point the recognition that if the conditions for maintaining a working state — namely, housing stability, the restoration of relationships, and emotional stability — are not first established, no job can be sustained.
What these cases commonly show is clear. For the independence of young people, employment is an important requirement, but it cannot be the starting point for solving the problem. Amid housing instability, severed relationships, and the absence of emotional recovery, employment is easily interrupted. That is why the creation of social infrastructure in which they can work and live must take priority.
In South Korea, Seoul City recently proposed the ‘Ordinance on Support for Youth Who Have Left Home,’ beginning to call out by name, in the language of policy, those who had stood outside the system. This is a signal that severance from family is to be recognized not as an individual choice but as a state that requires additional protection. However, the ordinance is merely a starting point; how far housing and care will be designed as a public responsibility remains a challenge to be resolved.
Youth who left home are a case that reveals how Korean society has defined youth independence and what premises it has taken for granted in that process. In a place where protection and support have disappeared and only individual responsibility remains, no life can be sustained. How we answer the question posed by the existence of young people who left home is also a matter of choosing the direction in which youth policy will proceed going forward.
by Editor L