SEOUL, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- South Korea was left behind in the global artificial intelligence (AI) startup boom as science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students show limited willingness to launch new ventures, local newspaper Chosun Ilbo said Monday.
In collaboration with the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI), the newspaper recently surveyed 1,229 STEM students from South Korea, China, the United States and Japan, with about 300 respondents from each country.
The results showed that only 12 percent of the South Korean students expressed a desire to start their own business, underscoring a deep-rooted aversion to entrepreneurship among the country's STEM talent.
It was just one-fifth the level of the United States, placing South Korea at the very bottom of the ranking alongside Japan with 11 percent.
Nearly one in three STEM students in China wanted to launch a venture company, a rate almost three times higher than that of South Korea.
The newspaper pointed out that South Korea remained noticeably sidelined from the global trend of a "startup big bang" ignited by AI.
The number of domestic business operators, including self-employed businesses, stood at 1,135,561 in 2025, hitting the lowest in 10 years.
After peaking at about 1.48 million in 2020, the figure had been on a steady decline.
A particularly worrying trend was found among the younger generation, given that the number of startups among those under 30 dropped by 6.6 percent year-on-year in 2025, marking the sharpest decrease across all age groups.
Technology-based startups managed to rebound 2.9 percent in 2025 after falling for the past four years.
Another newspaper, Munhwa Ilbo, explained that South Korean youth were trapped by a fear of failure and a bleak startup environment.
An unnamed university graduate, who had dreamed of developing a tailored travel guide app, was quoted as saying that he abandoned his entrepreneurial dream due to overwhelming fear that a single failure could turn him into a delinquent borrower in his 20s as he had to take out loans for initial capital.
According to a separate survey of 1,002 unemployed young South Koreans unveiled last December, 27.6 percent of the respondents answered that their intention to start a business in the future was high.
Despite the relatively high figure, the problem lay in unfavorable startup conditions as 50.8 percent perceived the startup environment as "negative," nearly three times higher than 17.2 percent who responded that it was "positive."
Exactly half of the respondents cited the burden of failure risk as the primary reason for not considering a startup.
To overcome barriers that dampen their entrepreneurial will, young people identified "funding and manpower support" as the most critical necessities.
A whopping 66.6 percent of respondents said their willingness to start a business would grow if existing policies expanded financial funding and manpower assistance. ■