The 'Job' That Surpassed Doctors and Judges... The No.1 Future Dream Chosen by 43% of Upper Elementary Students

2nd Place is Occupations Related to Health, Social Welfare, and Religion, Including Doctors

A survey revealed that many children in South Korea aspire to become celebrities or sports athletes as their future careers.

According to the '2024 Korea Welfare Panel Survey and Analysis Report's Child Supplementary Survey' conducted by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs and Seoul National University Social Welfare Research Institute on the 9th, a survey on desired career paths was conducted with 330 children in grades 4 to 6 attending elementary school as of March last year. The overwhelming majority chose 'culture, arts, sports experts and related occupations.'

The research team asked children to select two desired future occupations as their first and second choices, and analyzed the desired careers based on the middle classification categories of the 7th revision of the Korean Standard Classification of Occupations by Statistics Korea, focusing on categories with high response frequencies among children.

Based on the first-choice responses, the largest portion, 43.22%, named 'culture, arts, sports experts and related occupations' as their future dream. This category includes actors, singers, athletes, theater and film directors and performance planners, painters, performing artists, designers, writers, and journalists.

Students having lunch at an elementary school in Gyeongnam on the afternoon of the 6th of last month. Photo by Yonhap News

The second most chosen occupational group was 'health, social welfare, and religion-related occupations,' which includes doctors, nurses, pharmacists, Korean medicine doctors, nutritionists, social workers, and religious figures, accounting for 10.02%.

Next were 'education experts and related occupations' such as professors and teachers (9.35%), 'legal and administrative professionals' including judges, prosecutors, lawyers, and public officials (7.30%), and 'cooking and food service occupations' including chefs (6.76%).

Following these were 'public and corporate executives' (5.22%), 'science experts and related occupations' (4.95%), 'information and communication experts and technical occupations' (4.86%), 'beauty, lodging, travel, and entertainment-related occupations' (2.40%), 'engineering experts and technical occupations' (1.58%), and 'agriculture, livestock, forestry, and fishery-related occupations' (1.42%).

Regarding the second-choice desired occupations, the most popular was again 'culture, arts, sports experts and related occupations' at 21.53%. 'Cooking and food service occupations' (12.20%) and 'education experts and related occupations' (11.11%) also showed high proportions.

Additionally, about half of the children had a positive perception of the possibility of obtaining their first-choice desired occupation. When asked about their thoughts on whether they could have their first-choice occupation, 41.51% responded 'somewhat yes,' and 11.73% responded 'definitely yes.'