Anchor: The number of people out of a job for over six months has exceeded 150-thousand, the highest figure in 18 years. Meanwhile, those who gave up looking for employment also hit a record high at 520-thousand.
Our Park Jong-hong has the details.

Report: The number of long-term unemployed topped 150-thousand in the first quarter of the year.

These are people who have been unable to land a job for over six months.

Statistics Korea said Wednesday that the figure is up nearly 19 percent from the same period last year and marks the highest in 18 years.

Meanwhile, the total number of those without a job in the country for the first three months of the year was one million-181-thousand.

Those in their 20s were found to have taken up the lion’s share of the long-term unemployed.

Experts say this high rate is alarming and forecast the situation will only worsen in the future due to the prolonged shortage of jobs in the country.

A manager at Statistics Korea said corporate restructuring in the shipbuilding industry and dismal hiring in the manufacturing sector seem to have prompted the unemployed to give up seeking employment altogether.

Five-hundred-and-twenty-thousand people stopped looking for jobs in the first quarter, an increase of one-point-three percent on-year.
Park Jong-hong, KBS World Radio News.