The government has unveiled comprehensive steps to help teenagers and young adults who are socially isolated or who lead secluded lives in their own homes or rooms. 

The health ministry on Wednesday unveiled a set of four measures during a meeting on youth policies chaired by Prime Minister Han Duck-soo. 

Steps include establishing a system to identify such young people in advance and conducting trial projects on supporting them. The measures also include strengthening safety nets in the daily life of school-aged children and people who just started working as well as provide legal basis in communities in a bid to prevent and manage these groups. 

The government devised the steps after a survey found that there are up to 540-thousand teenagers and young adults in the nation who are socially isolated or who lead secluded lives. The health ministry conducted the survey for six months since May on eight-thousand-874 such young people. 

According to the survey, the biggest reason such people opted to lead secluded lives was difficulty in the workplace, followed by personal relations and family issues. 

More than eight out of ten of the surveyed expressed clear intent to get out of their current state, with more than 67 percent of respondents having made attempts to no longer be isolated, including making inquiries to private organizations. 

Of the surveyed who did not even attempt to return to ordinary life, 28-and-a-half percent said they didn’t make such attempts because they didn’t know how to get help.