This South Korean tech start-up hires only seniors over 55, to prove a point

While South Korea’s corporate culture is enmeshed in issues of age discrimination, EverYoung is showing that seniors could be an untapped resource in the labour market.

SEOUL: In the office of one of Seoul’s young tech companies, workers click away at a frantic pace, eyes glued to the screen, with gamer-like concentration on the complex software on their screens.

Without looking at their faces, you would not guess that everyone who works here is over the age of 55 - a strict condition that the company imposes when hiring staff.

In 2013, Mr Chung Eunsung founded EverYoung, a content monitoring company that hires only seniors, because he wanted to do something “practical and concrete” about age discrimination, an issue he sees as a “very pressing” one.

South Korea’s corporate environment is notorious for forcing senior workers into retirement before the official retirement age of 60. In a recent survey among people aged 20 to 50 by Statistics Korea, 82 per cent of respondents felt at risk of being forced into early retirement.

Mr Kim Seong-Kyu, a manager at EverYoung, said: “We wanted to find a way to get these seniors to participate in economic activities.” Read more

Lam Shushan - Channel NewsAsia - 13 June 2017