Young People Struggling Under Debt... Nearly 30,000 in Their 20s and 30s Apply for Personal Rehabilitation

[Financial News] Nearly 30,000 people in their 20s and 30s applied for personal rehabilitation through July this year, data showed.
According to data from the National Court Administration on the number of personal rehabilitation applications by age group over the past seven years, obtained by Moon Jin-seok, a Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker on the National Assembly Planning and Finance Committee, a total of 96,722 people applied for personal rehabilitation from January through July this year. That figure was about 65% of the 149,112 applicants recorded for the whole of last year.
Personal rehabilitation is a court procedure for people who have regular income but cannot manage their debts. Among this year's applicants, 7,909 were in their 20s and 21,484 were in their 30s, bringing the combined total to 29,393. They accounted for 30.4% of all applicants this year, slightly down from 32.1% last year.
The number of people whose debt adjustments were finalized in the first half of this year stood at 97,199. Of these, 10,442 were in their 20s or younger and 21,148 were in their 30s, for a combined 31,590 people, or 32.5% of the total. Compared with the same period last year, the number of people in their 20s or younger rose by 2.6%, while the number of people in their 30s increased by 7.5%.
The scale of their debt also grew. In the first half of this year, the total debt of people in their 20s or younger whose debt adjustments were finalized amounted to 315.6 billion won, while the figure for those in their 30s was 1.1198 trillion won. Their per-person debt stood at 30.22 million won and 52.95 million won, respectively, up 1.9% and 6.9% from the first half of last year.
The figures have prompted concerns that young people's debt burden remains high, even as the economic growth rate improves on the back of a semiconductor boom.
Moon Jin-seok emphasized, "The indicators have improved on the back of the semiconductor boom, but young people are getting by on debt. We need a safety net to support young people before they fall into delinquency so that the benefits of growth can reach them."
[email protected] Jang Yu-ha Reporter