Fortune-telling·psychiatry·Botox, shopping this anxious···why is it now the ‘Warring States of Jeongbyeong’? - 경향신문

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①Youth, Only As a Genre - Why is it now the ‘Warring States of Jeongbyeong’?

Using the social big-data analysis platform ‘Some Trend’, Kyunghyang Shinmun analyzed SNS/community mentions over the past 10 years and found that in 2016, ‘Hell Joseon’ surged. After that, ‘small but certain happiness’ in 2018, ‘Gatsaeng’ (God+life) in 2022, and ‘Nukalhyeop/Alppano’ in 2024 each spiked in turn. In 2026, ‘jeongbyeong’ (a shortened form of mental illness) overwhelmed every buzzword. Illustration|Claude

Anxiety arrives out of the blue. When yesterday and tomorrow's to-dos chase each other around in one's head (Yoon Hye-won·26·pseudonym), when at the tail end of his 20s he received a salary of $1,650 (2,200,000 KRW)+α (Lee Jeong-ho·29·pseudonym), when her cheekbones, which seem to stick out more than those of someone on Instagram, come to mind (Yoon Yu-jin·24), when at work she walks a tightrope all day between tension and fatigue (Lee Eun-se·25)…

Seventy-four out of 100 young people interviewed by Kyunghyang Shinmun spoke of anxiety. Anxiety, which has become the background hum of life, is conveyed as restlessness, burnout, and hopelessness. Young people attach the name ‘jeongbyeong’ (a contraction of mental illness) to this feeling that is hard to define cleanly. Appearance-jeongbyeong, weight-jeongbyeong, midface-jeongbyeong, pedigree-jeongbyeong, countryside-jeongbyeong, jeongbyeong-dating… Wherever society brandishes a ruler in the name of a “right answer,” jeongbyeong arises. Anxiety, compressed into “my illness,” becomes a weakness that young people themselves must manage and solve. They search for a “defense against anxiety” prescription.

Moon Jun-hyuk (26) sought counseling “to control my anxiety.” Having dropped out of high school and attended a regional university, he was long crushed by the sense of having “stepped out of the mainstream.” He spent at least $3,000 (4,000,000 KRW) on counseling then. For a year and a half, he went once a week at $37.50 (50,000 KRW) per session. Kim Ye-eun (26·pseudonym) lost 20㎏ over six months by eating only tomatoes “because the thinner I got, the better I was treated.” Around the time her hair began to fall out, she started taking antidepressants. Of the 100 young people, 43 had received psychological counseling or psychiatric treatment.

An expensive prescription does not automatically block anxiety. Kang Ji-hye (26·anonymous) recently came down with “age-jeongbyeong.” Even the psychiatric medication she had taken for five years did not stop it. A society that treats people as dropouts if they fail to clear life’s “quest” (mission) milestones on timeentrance exams, jobs, marriagestoked jeongbyeong. Perhaps the one that needs a prescription is society. But that society did not change, and Kang decided to leave for a working holiday in Australia.

Lower-threshold prescriptions than hospitals have become trends. Fortune-telling swept by Instagram's algorithm. Park Jin-woo (33·pseudonym), who has worked in delivery for 11 years, gave up psychiatric counseling because he could not take out insurance and because records would remain. Instead, he goes to a shamanic shrine once a month. The “feeling that it tells you what to do in an anxious life” puts his mind at ease.

Sixty-nine out of 100 young people had consulted saju or shamanic readings. What they seek through saju is not prophecy. It is “certainty,” “courage,” and “peace of mind.” So they choose to believe only the good parts. Han So-yul (20·pseudonym), a third-time exam-taker who gets anxious if she rests even an hour while in the '9 to 11' study room, finds stability in a single “good line” in her saju. She thinks, I will end up succeeding. With online saju sites and ChatGPT, you can even pick and buy the words you need to soothe anxiety for less than $0.75 (1,000 KRW).

These days, Yoon Yu-jinwho says she is at “peak appearance-jeongbyeong”looks to Botox for a prescription to shake off anxiety. Asked, “Will a better future come if I live diligently?” she answers, “No!” For her, appearance is one of the few areas she can “control.” Her paycheck in the social welfare field, “where working harder does not mean getting more,” is not something she can easily change through effort. A square jaw, on the other hand, can change for $75 (100,000 KRW).

Square jaw, pebbled chin, salivary glands, forehead, lip corners, alar base, glabella, temples… Yoon has gotten Botox in various parts of the face, which society has finely partitioned into “pretty.” Every time she goes to the dermatology clinic, she spends money “as if possessed by something.” It feels like a relatively straightforward “anxiety prescription,” but in truth she was satisfied only with the square jawand even that wears off in six months. No one knows how the standard of beauty will change again, like the “short midface” that suddenly became the formula for a youthful look one day.

Anxiety is the feeling that only I have strayed from the answers set by society. But the moment it becomes “jeongbyeong,” the social context is removed. Looking at the evolution of buzzwords over the past 10 years, you can see how the spotlight that once shone on social structure has shifted to the individual.

In 2016, Kyunghyang Shinmun ran a feature series on youth titled <Trembling Youth>. Back then, young people were angry about narrow job prospects and housing woes. The buzzwords of the time were ‘Hell Joseon’ and ‘dirt spoon.’ There was self-mockery mixed in, but underpinning it was anger at the structure. But “leaving Joseon” failed, and the energy of “we must change society” was converted into the individual engine of “let me at least live well.” Using the social big-data analysis platform ‘Some Trend’ to analyze SNS/community mentions over the past decade, we found that the ‘Hell Joseon’ and “leave Joseon” surges in 2016 went downhill the following year. In 2018, ‘small but certain happiness’ and ‘YOLO’ (YOLO·you only live once), and in 2022, ‘Gatsaeng’ (God+life) each hit their peaks in turn. Regardless of the structure, it became important to hone one’s inner life and abilities.

In 2024, the mention of ‘Nukalhyeop’ (Who is threatening me with a knife?) and ‘Alppano’ (Not my business) increased markedly, going a step further. People who brought up structure were castigated for blaming others. Anxiety became solely the individual’s responsibility. The buzzword that arrived at the end of that road is 2026’s ‘jeongbyeong.’ When anxiety is to be diagnosed by a disease name, there is simply no room for structure to enter. Yet a prescription that omits structure does not eliminate anxiety. Young people squeeze effort out of themselves like a painkiller. Even when she takes sleeping pills and consults saju, Yoon Hye-won finds it hard to shake the “feeling of being chased.” She lives by ticking off graduate school assignments, self-improvement, part-time work, and more as if pin-dropping coordinates in a navigation app. Even without direction, anxiety quiets down while she is at least putting in effort.

There is also a last resort: turning off the switch that detects anxiety. Young people call this “power-saving mode.” “So I don’t burn out fast” (Choi Yun-jeong·35·pseudonym), they try to feel no emotion at all. Job seeker Lee Chae-won (24·pseudonym) also tries to get by with as little emotion as possible. To leave no room for anxiety, she built a routine of studying for written exams 3 hours in the morning and 5 hours in the afternoon. She times her study hours with an app. The only time her emotion switch turns on unwillingly is the guilt that comes when she procrastinates. One in five (19 people) spend their day in “power-saving mode” to survive.

In this Warring States of jeongbyeong, where all manner of “jeongbyeong” run rampant, young people get prescriptions and make it through today with their emotion switches turned off. No one blamed the world.