January 13, 2025
SEOUL – Kim Ga-hyeon rolls her eyes when asked about being part of the “MZ generation,” a term commonly used in South Korea to describe young people in general.
“We’re talking about people who could be my aunts and uncles,” says the 21-year-old part-timer at a Yongsan cafe.
“When I think of older Millennials, I think of my bosses, not my peers.”
She’s referring to a Korean phenomenon that combines two distinct generations into a single category — a practice that has left many young Koreans feeling misunderstood.
The Pew Research Center defines Millennials as those born between 1981 and 1996, and Gen Z as those born after 1997. But curiously in Korea, these two age groups are commonly lumped together under the term “MZ” — an unusually broad grouping spanning from teenagers to adults in their early 40s.
The term has exploded across news headlines, policy proposals, marketing campaigns and social media in recent years. It’s not just a handy catch-all for everything supposedly wrong about young people, but also a go-to label for marketers and influencers who slap “MZ” onto every seemingly fashionable trend and lifestyle phenomenon.
Either way, it has created confusion for those swept up in the mix, particularly among actual Gen Z folks who see no connection between their reality and what the term seems to suggest.
“It’s just a buzzword that doesn’t reflect our reality at all,” says Chloe Lee, a 23-year-old college student. “I feel like it’s mostly older people using this term when they want to complain about young people in general.”
The prevalence of this catch-all term reveals more about those who use it than those it purports to describe, experts say.
“It’s essentially a meaningless concept with no academic merit,” Shin Jin-wook, sociology professor at Chung-Ang University, told The Korea Herald via email. “If anything, the term’s very vagueness makes it perfect material for political and commercial exploitation.”
In his 2022 book “The Nonexistent Generation,” Shin points out that this grouping emerged primarily out of political convenience. Unlike older age groups with established voting patterns — progressives in their 40s and 50s, and reliable conservatives among those 60 and older — younger voters have emerged as crucial swing voters in recent elections.
This was particularly evident in the April 2021 by-elections for mayors of Seoul and Busan, when voters in their 20s and 30s showed a significant rightward shift compared to just few years before. These age groups have commanded outsized attention in political discourse and media coverage ever since.
“The MZ terminology became a convenient shorthand for politicians courting young voters,” Shin explains. “But the problem is that Korea’s decision-making elite are generations removed from having any real grasp of young people’s lives, let alone the distinctions between those in their 20s and 30s.”
Today, references to the “MZ generation” have moved beyond political discourse. The tendency to stereotype based on one’s generational membership has only grown more widespread — a phenomenon sociologists call “generationalism,” Shin explains.
“The younger generation, as portrayed by the media, is predominantly urban, comfortably middle-class techno-optimists with disposable income and cultural capital – a privileged minority,” the professor adds, noting that major Korean news outlets primarily focus on their consumer habits and market potential.
“Meanwhile, the majority facing financial instability and job insecurity remain largely invisible in these narratives.”
The Korea Herald’s analysis of local news coverage revealed a similar pattern for “Gen Z” discourse as well.
Data from Big Kinds, the Korea Press Foundation’s media analytics platform, yields 8,129 articles from 87 local outlets mentioning “Gen Z” between 2021 and November 20 2024 – excluding references to “MZ” and stories about Gen Z abroad. Of these articles, 39 percent contained the words “consumption,” “consumer” or “brand,” indicating a heavy emphasis on commercial behavior and brand relationships.
Meanwhile, only 2 percent of articles touched on terms like “part-time work,” “unemployment,” “irregular job,” “suicide rate,” “poverty” or “inequality” — generational challenges that directly affect their everyday survival.
“The critical question is whose story gets told,” Shin notes. “Are we seeing an entire generation, or just its most privileged segment capable of active consumption?”
A 2023 study led by Cho Jae-hee at Sogang University’s School of Media combined in-depth interviews with systematic analysis of viewpoints among 22 workers, evenly split between young Millennial and Gen Z cohorts. Based on the results, researchers identified six distinct groups among participants, varying from one to five members each.
Each group tells markedly different stories about how young workers navigate the world around them. Some participants saw their jobs as stepping-stones. Others grudgingly tried to meet workplace demands and fit in. A few fully embraced and identified with company values. And some felt fundamentally disconnected from their workplaces altogether.
“Our results … reveal the diverse ways young Millennials and Gen Z workers view their jobs and workplace relationships, which contradict popular media narratives about them,” the researchers concluded. “Both organizations and their members need to critically reconsider using such broad generalizations.”
Interestingly, one notable commonality stood out among all these differences: the participants’ reaction to how the media portrays their generation. All six groups demonstrated either “rejection,” “displeasure” or “indifference” toward the “MZ” label and its associated stereotypes.
That general sense of disapproval was shared across the board by young people interviewed by The Korea Herald.
“I honestly don’t waste time thinking about what older people say about us, and neither do my friends,” said the 23-year-old college student Lee.
Living alone in Seoul and working two part-time jobs to cover rent and living expenses, Lee feels she has more pressing concerns than generational stereotypes being thrown around by politicians and journalists.
“I’m still in school so I can’t speak for everyone, but friends around me who’ve started their jobs are all working hard to make ends meet,” she says. “I’ve never actually seen any of those intergenerational drama everyone keeps talking about.”
“We’re just trying to get by,” she added. “We’re individuals first and foremost, each living our own lives. That’s all there is to it.”
Oh Ji-eon, a 20-year-old fashion marketing student, agrees. “I don’t even get what the fuss is about. Why are older people taking everything so seriously?”
Oh is amused by TV comedy shows portraying young workers as workplace nightmares. She feels such blanket characterizations of young people like her as self-centered and disruptive are largely overblown.
If anything, Oh says, what makes her generation unique is that it defies any fixed definition — they are free, fluid, and “free-floating,” to use her own words.
“We’re more like a free-floating bunch — there’s no fixed characteristic or taste. We just flow wherever our interests take us at the moment.”
Kim Ha-yoon contributed to this report.