> The bleak outlook is borne out across the country as industrial hubs shed tens of thousands of jobs. Ulsan, home to Hyundai’s heavy and automobile industries, was once South Korea’s fastest-growing and wealthiest city. Today, it represents the nation’s rust belt, the human toll of economic decline evident in the increasing spate of suicide attempts (nearly 200 so far this year). Young people are also fleeing: Having quadrupled since the 1970s, the population of Ulsan began to decline in 2016. Ulsan is just one of nine regions the government has dubbed “industrial crisis zones” and earmarked for almost $1 billion in support. Seoul is also in the process of implementing a $3.5 billion supplementary budget to create jobs and tackle youth unemployment, which remains intractable at about 10 percent.

I never expected to read about my hometown on HN lol. "Republic of Hyundai" is what Ulsanites jokingly called it because they own the province. The hospitals, public school, textbooks sponsored by Hyundai that needs to be closely studied to do well on exams that will ultimately lead them to follow their father's footsteps as a Hyundai employee, in order to afford Hyundai built apartment complexes and drive to work in a Hyundai car. At one point, Ulsan had the highest median salary in Korea. I remember hearing stories of a Hyundai employee who came to work in a KIA car (before they were acquired by Hyundai) and unfortunately was witnessed by the wife of a major stakeholder in Hyundai and proceeded to rat him out and fire him. Entire apartment complexes would be quiet with only housewives and elderly in them because the men are all at Hyundai, the kids are at a Hyundai built school who are brainwashed to accepting the system, one that promises to award rote memoization and standardized tests to determine your place in what I coin here as an Absolute Corporatocracy.

There were other weird incidences in Ulsan. Chinook helicopters landing in our elementary school yard at night, pamphlets raining down on kids in playground and air sirens announcing the beginning of civil defense exercise to simulate a North Korean air raid. The day after Kim Il Sung died we wrote about how unification was just around the corner and were rejoicing until North Korean submarines started showing up in fish nets triggering a nation wide manhunt.