42 Asia The EconomistOctober 12th 2019
21their children at prestigious universities
through fraud and bribery caused wide-
spread outrage. But such scandals prompt
particular anger in South Korea, he argues,
because of the country’s rigid labour mar-
ket, which offers few opportunities for
those starting out. “It’s a systemic pro-
blem—there are all these old people with
high salaries who are impossible to get rid
of, so, to keep paying them, firms avoid hir-
ing young people or only give them irregu-
lar contracts.”
The official youth unemployment rate
reached 10.4% this summer. But that does
not include those so discouraged that they
have stopped looking for work, and those
who undertook further studies to put off
looking for a job. If these groups are taken
into account, some economists reckon, the
true unemployment rate for young people
may be as high as 25%.
Mr Moon is trying hard to level the play-
ing field. His government offers generous
subsidies to companies that employ young
workers, is encouraging employers to con-vert part-time contracts into regular jobs
and pays a monthly stipend of 500,000
won ($420) to some youngsters from poor
backgrounds who are unable to find work.
It has banned discriminatory hiring prac-
tices, too, such as asking for parents’
names and titles on application forms, and
tightened rules for lawmakers who want to
employ relatives.
The government is also drafting legisla-
tion to criminalise the hiring of ghostwrit-
ers or consultants to buff up university ap-
plications, a practice which for many
epitomises the unfair advantages of the
rich. Those who can afford it spend tens of
thousands of dollars on such services. Such
extravagant and blatant efforts to secure
undue advantage in university applica-
tions are so common that they have be-
come the subject of a popular television
drama, “Sky Castle”. In one episode, a rich
father buys a model pyramid to remind his
sons of the structure of society. Some South
Koreans say the show is so true to life they
cannot bear to watch it. 7“T
hey areus,”saidJacindaArdern,
New Zealand’s prime minister, of
the 51 Muslims, many of them immi-
grants, who were murdered by a white
nationalist in Christchurch in March.
She has positioned herself as a leader
“with a bit of heart”. So it was embarrass-
ing that her centre-left government had
kept a policy that all but excluded any
refugees from Africa and the Middle East.
The government has announced that it
will amend the rules in question, which
are “the very definition of discrimina-
tion”, according to the immigration
minister, Iain Lees-Galloway.
They were inherited from the conser-
vative National Party, which surrepti-
tiously ordained in 2009 that refugees
from the Middle East and Africa could
come to New Zealand only if they had
relatives living there already. Few did, so
their numbers dwindled, even though
New Zealand technically allocated 28%
of its total intake of refugees to the two
regions. Over the past nine years it has
accepted just 187 people from the entire
continent of Africa—fewer than arrived
in the single year before the policy came
into force, according to Murdoch Ste-
phens of Massey University.
Politicians had defended the policy
on the basis that it gave priority to people
from countries nearer to New Zealand.
Over the past decade, 60% of refugeeshavecomefromAsiaandthePacific. But
official documents show that the govern-
ment was motivated by “broad security
concerns” as well. The rules were racist
and Islamophobic, says Guled Mire, an
activist who campaigned against them.
Ms Ardern’s Labour Party might have
changed the rules sooner, but its populist
coalition partner, New Zealand First,
wanted to keep them. It has now been
talked into raising the quotas for Afri-
cans and Middle Easterners to 15% of the
total apiece. Ms Ardern’s government is
also lifting the cap on the total number of
refugees New Zealand admits each year
from 1,000 to 1,500.
Advocates for refugees say New Zea-
land should do more. Even relative to its
population of 4.8m, the number of asy-
lum-seekers it lets in is tiny. Australia,
despite ferociously guarding its borders
against unauthorised migrants arriving
by boat, lets in close to 20,000 refugees
through official channels annually—
more than twice as many per person as
New Zealand will under the new rules.
What is more, New Zealand has also
resolved to show no quarter to “boat
people”—even though no people-smug-
gling vessels have ever been discovered
in its waters. In this year’s “well-being”
budget, the government allocated
NZ$25m ($16m) to discouraging any from
ever attempting the journey.MoreMrNiceGuy
Refugees in New ZealandSYDNEY
The government tries to live up to its welcoming reputationO
nly in desperatetimes do govern-
ments enlist the help of teenage disc
jockeys. Thailand’s ministry of social de-
velopment must be in a panic: it has hired
more than 500 of them. Its desperation
stems from the teenage-pregnancy rate,
which has risen even as the overall birth
rate has dropped. Thailand has one of the
highest teenage-pregnancy rates in South-
East Asia (see chart). Hence the djs, who
will promote safe sex on the radio.
That is not the government’s only ini-
tiative to stop teenagers becoming mums.
It is also sending health-ministry officials
to lecture students about “young love”. It
has added sex-education questions to stan-
dardised exams. And in 2016 it passed the
Prevention and Solution of the Adolescent
Pregnancy Problem Act, which gives all ad-
olescents the right to free contraception.
The goal is to slash the number of children
born to teenagers by a third by 2026.
Supichaya Singhakasem, who had a
baby at 18, says she received sex education
at school in Bangkok, but it was unenlight-
ening. (She attracted a large online follow-
ing, of both fans and detractors, after post-
ing photos of herself in school uniform
holding her baby.) Her experience is typi-
cal: teachers tend to focus on anatomy and
deliver clinical lectures rather than practi-
cal advice, says Beena Kuttiparambil, who
works for the United Nations Children’s
Fund (unicef) in Thailand.
unicef favours online sex ed. Such
schemes have raised awareness of the birds
and the bees in Cambodia and Hong Kong.
Thais are avid netizens, spending an im-
probable ten hours online each day, ac-
cording to the government. Digital plat-The government takes unusual steps to
improve sex educationTeenage pregnancy in ThailandA DJ saved my life
MotherlandSource:WorldBank *15-to19-year-oldsAdolescent* fertility rate, births per 1,000 women01020304050602000 02 04 06 08 10 12 14 17MyanmarSingaporeThailandVietnamIndonesia