00:06Before you submit that application, Korea's job market shifted in a way that changes the
00:12calculus for where you should be looking. It's now taking longer than ever for graduates to
00:17land a first job. But two of Korea's biggest chebols just joined a global AI advisory board,
00:24and one telecom giant is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into new AI infrastructure
00:30jobs. It's Friday, July 24th. Let's look at what this means for job seekers and graduates in Korea.
00:38Korean youth unemployment has climbed to its highest level since the 2009 financial crisis,
00:44driven by companies favouring experienced hires over new graduates. At the same time,
00:50Korea's biggest tech and industrial players are doubling down on AI infrastructure,
00:56which tends to create hiring waves in engineering, operations and data centre roles. Understanding
01:02where the growth is concentrating matters more than the overall unemployment headline.
01:07Here's what the numbers show. 48.6% of unemployed Korean graduates have searched for over a year,
01:15the highest share since the 2009 financial crisis. SK Telecom is investing 750 billion won,
01:24about $506.8 million, to launch SK Hyper, a new subsidiary building 15 gigawatts of AI data centres by
01:342029. Samsung's E.J. Yong and Hyundai's Chung E. Sun just joined a new global AI advisory council,
01:42alongside NVIDIA's Jensen Huang and Microsoft's Satya Nadella. Yongin, Kwasong and Pyeongteak are
01:50targeting a combined population of 4 million by 2040, driven largely by semiconductor plant expansion.
01:57General corporate exam prep fell to 34% of job seekers, down two points, while civil service exam prep
02:05rose to 22.1%, up 3.9 points. So what does this mean if you're applying now? Earlier, we said
02:13the job
02:14market shifted, and for graduates, that shift favours AI infrastructure and semiconductor belt cities over
02:20general corporate applications. SK Hyper's build-out and the Yongin, Hwasong, Pyeongteak semiconductor cluster
02:28both point to where entry-level technical hiring is likely to grow fastest. If you're targeting career,
02:35these regions and sectors are worth prioritising over a broad corporate job search. That's today's
02:41AI Prism, careers edition. This episode was produced with AI assistance based on sole economic daily
02:48reporting, and reviewed by a human editor. AI Prism is a WAN-IFRA award-winning series. We'll be back tomorrow.
02:56You've been listening to AI Prism from sole economic daily.
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