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Fairness perceptions skew toward the young and economically vulnerable
People in their 20s and 30s, lower-income earners and those living outside the greater Seoul area are relatively more likely to see Korean society as unfair, according to a study by the Korea Institute of Public Administration analyzing its own Social Integration Survey from 2013 to 2024. As reported by The Korea Herald on October 5, 2026, researchers found that the share of people who view society as unfair has risen steadily over the past decade. Gender, education level and marital status were also linked to differences in how people responded.
The state-funded institute compared responses to similar questions asked year after year. Fairness was measured around how resources are distributed, how the social system operates, and how individuals are treated based on factors such as gender or employment status. So this isn’t a snapshot of opinion on a single event: it’s a picture of how people read the way society distributes resources and treats its members over time.
The survey defines young people as those in their 20s and 30s. Middle-aged and older respondents were less likely than younger ones to hold strong views that society is unfair. That doesn’t mean every young person reaches the same conclusion: it means the likelihood of holding a strongly negative view differs across age groups, and individual responses shouldn’t be read as representing an entire generation.
More qualified judgments than firm convictions
Among respondents, 32.5 percent said society is “somewhat unfair,” while 37.9 percent said it is “somewhat fair.” Both figures make up a substantial share of the total, which makes it hard to argue that society has settled on a single verdict. The long-term rise in unfairness perceptions and the actual distribution of responses in this survey are two separate pieces of information that need to be read together.
Those who felt strongly that society is unfair made up 9.6 percent, and those who felt extremely strongly made up 1.7 percent, compared with 1.9 percent who felt extremely strongly that society is fair. These figures show that even unfairness itself comes with varying degrees of intensity. Treating a “somewhat unfair” response as equivalent to deep distrust oversimplifies the results.
Researchers described most respondents’ attitude as “reserved skepticism” or “conditional acceptance.” Rather than firmly believing Korean society is either entirely fair or entirely unfair, most people land somewhere in between, accepting parts of it while still questioning others. That means even as the explanation for rising unfairness perceptions gets laid out, it should avoid suggesting that citizens are rejecting the entire social system outright.
Gender, region, education and income all played a role
Men were more likely than women to hold strong or extreme views that society is unfair. Still, among both men and women, middle-aged and older respondents were less likely than younger ones to hold such views. Because differences by gender and by age showed up at the same time, it’s difficult to reduce this result to a single explanation about conflict between men and women.
Regionally, residents of the greater Seoul area were relatively less likely than those elsewhere to see society as unfair. The greater Seoul area refers to Seoul along with the surrounding Incheon and Gyeonggi region. People without a spouse, those without a four-year college degree, and lower-income respondents also showed a higher tendency toward unfairness perceptions. That points to how a person’s social position and living conditions can shape their sense of fairness.
Employment status, by contrast, had little bearing on responses. In this analysis, simply having a job wasn’t enough to explain differences in fairness perception. Combined with the income- and education-based gaps that did emerge, this suggests that judgments about one’s economic situation aren’t fully captured by the binary of employed versus unemployed. Even so, this result alone can’t pin down exactly how each individual factor operates.
A structural gap, not an emotional overreaction
The researchers read these patterns as a structural divide rather than an emotional overreaction specific to one generation. Their explanation rests on real gaps in how opportunity and resources are distributed, and how people are treated based on socioeconomic status. That framing shifts the question away from who is more sensitive, and toward which conditions make people more likely to rate fairness lower in the first place.
Still, a perception survey on fairness is not the same as a study that directly proves the individual causes of unfairness. What’s being reported here is a difference in responses across groups, along with the researchers’ structural interpretation. It shouldn’t be read as confirming that every young person or every resident outside Seoul shares the same experience, or as pinning the cause of unfairness perceptions on any single policy or institution.
The study shows that Korea’s debate over fairness resists being narrowed down to a single generational issue or an employment issue. Alongside a long-term shift in perception, differences emerged by gender, age, region, education and income, and most responses leaned toward qualified hesitation rather than extreme judgment. The researchers’ explanation focuses on understanding those differences through the lens of gaps in opportunity and treatment.
Source: The Korea Herald, October 5, 2026 (https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10893274).
