Why Young Koreans Live With Their Parents: Eommisae and Independence

The numbers show that independence is coming later

According to the May 2025 youth supplement to Korea's Economically Active Population Survey from Statistics Korea (now the National Data Office), the employment rate for people aged 15 to 29 was 46.2%, down 0.7 percentage points from a year earlier. After finishing school, it took an average of 11.3 months to land a first paid job. If your income is unstable for almost a year after graduation, moving out and paying rent naturally gets postponed.

Housing figures point the same way. In the 2024 "Survey on the Lives of Young People" released by Korea's Office for Government Policy Coordination, 54.4% of young adults aged 19 to 34 lived with their parents. Of those, 38.0% said they had a concrete plan to move out. In other words, about six in ten young adults living at home had not made, or had not chosen to make, a plan to leave.

There is an international comparison too. In the Korea country note of Society at a Glance 2024, the OECD reported that 81% of Koreans aged 20 to 29 lived with their parents (2020), compared with an OECD average of 50% (2022). Because the reference years differ, it is hard to read this as a same-year gap. Still, the OECD also pointed to how difficult it is for young Koreans to reach stable jobs and housing.

People’s interpretations of the eommisae meme provide a separate kind of evidence about how the term is discussed. In a 2026 family relationships survey by the Korean research firm Embrain Trend Monitor, 48.5% of respondents knew the word eommisae, and people in their 20s were the most familiar with it at 63.0%. Six in ten respondents (60.0%) said economic insecurity seemed to be feeding the trend, and "job and economic insecurity" was the most common reason given for why it spread (34.5%, multiple answers allowed). This was a private company's survey, so it is not a nationally representative statistic. It is more accurate to read it as data on how people feel.

Living together can shape shared routines

For example, take a 26-year-old job seeker. When she gets home from her study group, her mom has dinner ready, and they talk over the table about today's interview. Her mom sees her anxiety more closely than anyone. She, in turn, hears about her mom's menopause or work worries. Over time, they may develop a close, companionable relationship. This is an illustration of one possible experience, not a trend measured by the co-residence statistics.

Time together builds closeness, but it also creates more chances to clash. A comment about curfew, dating, or career can sound like nagging. Her mom worries first. The daughter is already an adult but may feel treated like a child. Closeness and conflict grow together under one roof.

Moms have changed, too. Many mothers of today's Korean twentysomethings are comfortable with smartphones and social media and actively enjoy travel and hobbies. They go to the same cafés as their daughters and watch the same dramas, so there is plenty to talk about. It is only fair to say that the mother's changes played as big a role as the daughter's circumstances.

And when you live together, care does not flow in just one direction. The daughter books her mom's hospital appointments, helps her order at a kiosk, and fixes her phone settings. Financially the parents help the daughter; in daily life the daughter helps the parents. As this give-and-take builds up, the relationship slowly shifts from "guardian and child" toward "two adults who lean on each other."

Why some adult daughters turn to their mothers for support

Some people call their mom first whenever something upsetting happens on the way home from work. They may wonder whether being this close as an adult is too dependent.

Karen Fingerman at the University of Texas at Austin has long studied the support, contact, and feelings exchanged between grown children and their parents. In a 2012 study, her team found that grown children who received "intense support" from parents, meaning financial, advice, or emotional support several times a week, reported better psychological adjustment and life satisfaction than those who did not. Interestingly, the grown children themselves felt the support was "a bit much." The study surveyed 592 grown children (average age 23.8) and 399 parents in the US, so it cannot be applied straight to Korea. But it does show that leaning on your parents is not the same as failing to adjust.

That does not mean close relationships are always easy. In a 1996 study, Fingerman interviewed 48 pairs of mothers (average age 76) and daughters (average age 44). Even in caring pairs, tensions appeared: feeling intruded on, feeling left out, and worrying that the other person was not taking care of her health. No relationship is pure affection. Gratitude and irritation, worry and guilt all show up together.

A good bond looks something like this: you make your own choices, but you can open up when you are shaken. "What do you think, Mom?" and "Mom has to say yes" sound close, but they put the weight of the relationship in completely different places.

Where closeness ends and dependence begins

Financial support and emotional closeness can exist together. The problem starts when support takes away your ability to choose.

For example, imagine an office worker who lives in her parents' home and gets some help with living costs. If she makes decisions like changing jobs or dating on her own and simply tells her parents the outcome, living together is just a financial choice. On the other hand, if someone lives separately but cannot decide anything without her mom's approval each week, she may not be psychologically independent even with a different address.

So it helps to check yourself with questions like these:

1. Can you explain in one sentence why you live with your parents right now? (Money, distance, caregiving, it's just comfortable, etc.)
2. If you want to move out, is it money that stops you, or your mom's reaction?
3. Have you and your parents ever agreed on how to share living costs or housework?
4. In the past year, have you made at least one decision your mom disagreed with?
5. As much as you lean on your mom, do you also listen to her stories?

If you want a light look at how close you and your mom are right now, try The Mom Attachment Test. Ten questions place you in one of four types, from The Independent to The Attached. It is a just-for-fun test and does not rule on whether you are "dependent." Show your mom the result and use it to compare how close each of you thinks you are.

Is eommisae a product of anxiety, or a new kind of relationship?

Economic insecurity clearly plays a part in the eommisae trend. But it is not the whole story. Family culture, personality, number of siblings, parents' age and health, and household circumstances mix differently for everyone. There is also the fact that authoritarian parent–child relationships have softened in Korea, so more mothers and daughters act like friends. In a May 2026 article in the Korean newspaper Gwangju Ilbo, Professor Kim Mi-kyung of Gwangju University interpreted the trend as family closeness being expressed in a less hierarchical way as traditional familism and authoritarianism weaken.

So both "young people today can't stand on their own" and "being close to your mom is the best" are only half right. Does the relationship give both of you strength, and is there room to choose independence when you want it? If both are true, a twentysomething who is close to her mom is less a byproduct of anxiety and more like a teammate crossing a hard stretch of life together.

Sources

• Statistics Korea (now the National Data Office). 「2025년 5월 경제활동인구조사 청년층 부가조사 결과」 (Results of the May 2025 Economically Active Population Survey youth supplement), released July 24, 2025.
• Office for Government Policy Coordination. 「2024년 청년의 삶 실태조사 결과」 (Results of the 2024 Survey on the Lives of Young People), conducted by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs; sample of about 15,000 households of young adults aged 19–34.