Gihyun Jo

Gihyun Jo is leading nationwide recognition of Korean society’s shared responsibility in care by bringing forth the hidden voices of young carers. He is transforming how care is carried out in Korea—from isolated and family-only to collaborative and community-supported—by defining new roles for carers within communities and social welfare systems.

Gihyun is removing both stigma and practical barriers that isolate and overwhelm minor young carers—children and adolescents who care for family members with disabilities, illnesses, mental health conditions, or addictions—by creating a self-sustaining system that brings in “empathetic, relatable” young adults from local communities who share similar caregiving experiences. His structured mentoring program, Young-Young Care, empowers young adults—once young carers themselves—to turn their caregiving experiences into powerful tools for mentoring. With a newfound perspective and sense of responsibility, mentors play a pivotal role in communicating the real needs of young carers and their families to core program stakeholders—case managers and social workers at community welfare centers who identify and register residents in need and provide integrated social services.

Before Young-Young Care, fewer than 10% of young carers were aware of the support programs available to them and their families. However, through two pilot cohorts conducted in 2023–2024 in partnership with eight major community welfare centers nationwide, 100% of participating young carers—who had previously been withdrawn and hesitant to seek help—received financial support for living expenses and actively participated in developing care plans that addressed both their own and their family’s needs, in close collaboration with mentors and case managers.

With the impact already taking root and steadily growing—like one mentee, now 20, who cares for his grandmother with early-stage dementia and his father with schizophrenia, who has begun mentoring teenage carers in his neighborhood—Gihyun is scaling and advancing his ‘Young Carer Mentoring’ system. The virtuous cycle generating model ensures that young carers are automatically matched with local mentors as soon as they are registered at community welfare centers, and that mentees, as they grow into their adulthood, take over the mentor role in their communities—both as a nationwide initiative and as a mandatory provision under the Young Carers Support Act.

Building on the momentum he created with young carers in communities, Gihyun is catalyzing a national movement for a “Universal Right to Care” by launching a civil network platform—the Care Citizens’ Assembly— that brings together carers across generations with key stakeholders, including central and municipal government officials, National Assembly policymakers, and experts in social welfare and healthcare. Through the Assembly, Gihyun empowers and facilitates carers to actively leverage their own lived experiences in developing concrete policies and solutions like Young-Young Care to address Korea’s urgent care challenges amid a super-aged population and ultra-low birthrate.

Korea is undergoing an irreversible demographic shift toward a care crisis. In 2025, the country entered a super-aged society, with those aged 65 and older comprising 20% of the population (10 million people), while the middle-aged group (40–64) accounts for 41%. At the same time, Korea has recorded the lowest fertility rate among OECD countries—just 0.78 in 2024. Traditional family structures have rapidly broken down, with single-person households reaching 41% in 2022. As household sizes shrink and caregiving responsibilities redistribute, a growing number of young people are inheriting family care duties that were traditionally borne by women, often through unpaid labor.

According to the government's first official report on young carers in 2022, an estimated 5–8% of adolescents—approximately 184,000 to 295,000—serve as primary caregivers for family members in need. When young adults in their 20s and 30s are included, the total number of this hidden generation of carers is projected to well exceed one million. At the heart of Korea’s growing care crisis lies a systemic and cultural blind spot: care is still widely seen as a private obligation—undervalued, unpaid, and largely invisible. While the introduction of Long-Term Care Insurance for the Elderly in 2008 was an initial step towards socializing care, by 2020, over 60% of care continued to be provided within families. Public care services remain heavily dependent on low-wage, unstable labor, predominantly performed by middle-aged and older women.

For young carers, these challenges are even more acute. Many are left to navigate complex caregiving responsibilities alone—uncertain of where to seek help, unable to articulate their needs in welfare processes, and isolated from peers. In local communities, social workers and case managers have only recently begun to recognize the existence of young carers, following the government’s first formal acknowledgment of the issue in 2022. Due to limited understanding of the multifaceted burdens young carers carry—across family, school, and work environments—many professionals still face significant difficulties supporting and engaging with them meaningfully.

Despite the central government allocating over 1% of its GDP to elderly care, citizens lack access to the quality care they need. A 2024 study by the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements found that 85.5% of Koreans aged 60 and older wish to remain in their current homes or neighborhoods. However, top-down policy approaches that do not reflect the real needs of citizens have resulted in the majority of public resources being directed toward institutional care, leaving a severe shortage of accessible in-home and community-based care options.

This disconnect between the system and reality underscores the urgent need for intervention across the care ecosystem—redefining both how care is perceived and how it is delivered. Such intervention must empower all generations of carers—currently overlooked—who hold the potential to reshape the future of care in Korea. Achieving this requires a well-designed bridging system that actively engages multigenerational carers, social welfare professionals, and policymakers alike—reimagining their roles and enabling them to co-create practical, sustainable care solutions.

Young-Young Care is an intergenerational mentoring system connecting adolescent young carers with young adult mentors who have similar caregiving backgrounds. The program functions through a strategic triangular structure where mentors serve as vital intermediaries between mentees—as well as their families—and community social welfare stakeholders. Through this framework, mentors inspire and guide mentees in building necessary courage, confidence, and skills to eventually step into mentoring roles themselves, establishing a regenerative cycle that expands as community engagement grows. By bridging these relationships, the system addresses gaps in traditional social welfare delivery methods and enables participants to rethink their potential in collective caregiving, creating sustainable support networks that benefit the broader community.

To help mentors purposefully build trusting relationships with their mentees, Young-Young Care supports the mentors through a comprehensive training program prior to mentoring and supervision by professional counselors throughout the mentoring process.

The training of young adult mentors has three steps:

In Step 1, "Revisit and Reconnect," mentors re-evaluate their past caregiving experiences from their current perspective, articulate concrete insights and capabilities gained through caregiving, and share with peers their vision of the care life cycle.

Step 2, "Explore," brings in professional counselors specialized in adolescent counseling. Mentors first learn about prevalent issues among Korean adolescents and basic techniques in adolescent counseling, then practice with their peers through detailed counseling simulations.

In the final step, "Set Boundaries and Plan," mentors from previous cohorts share their experiences and help establish practical mentoring guidelines to maintain healthy relationships with mentees. Then, the new cohort of mentors learns about the array of public services available for young carers and the specific role social welfare centers play in supporting mentees.

Recognizing the importance of demonstrating concrete impacts in local social welfare systems to expand nationally, Gihyun deliberately approached eight major social welfare centers across the country to pilot the first two cohorts of Young-Young Care. All centers faced common struggles working with young carer households—particularly those that declined support despite evident needs. Initially, most case managers and social workers felt discouraged by their inability to communicate with young carers, but as mentors helped them better understand the complex needs of mentees and shared communication techniques, they began to proactively connect public services that meet the specific needs of young carers. Welfare stakeholders, once viewing young carers merely as 'beneficiaries', now actively seek out mentors from Young-Young Care as essential collaborators, recognizing carers' invaluable firsthand knowledge and problem-solving capabilities in addressing complex care challenges.

To ensure the sustainability of this model in the broader societal context, Gihyun incorporated certificates of completion—in the process of having them recognized as nationally certified qualifications—and compensation for mentors in Young-Young Care. Mentors, who once thought their caregiving experiences were "useless" for career building and thus a "waste of time," are now able to clearly communicate and utilize their caregiving experience and capacity in resumes, verified through certificates, and genuinely consider mentoring as a meaningful "transitional job" that effectively contributes to social participation, career building, and maintaining income. Moreover, there is an increasing number of mentors who are actively creating solutions and changes by, for example, writing social welfare research papers on the carer peer mentoring or directly contributing to refining the mentoring program by utilizing their expertise in adolescent counseling.

Prior to implementing Young-Young Care as an embedded model in the social welfare system, Gihyun first had to challenge deep-rooted stigma around speaking publicly about caregiving experiences and establish fundamental legal grounds to support young carers. To do so, Gihyun candidly shared his own journey as a young caregiver along with critical analysis on culture and systems around care by publishing a book, <Becoming a Father of My Father> in 2019—the first of its kind in Korea. This work garnered significant attention from the general public, media, and major government stakeholders such as the Mayor of Seoul and public officials from the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

Gihyun then utilized this public attention to build a nationwide network of adult young carers and to advance the societal conversation on care. Within the first two years of launching his organization, N-Inbun—meaning "sharing care as collective responsibility in n-ways"—Gihyun engaged in-person with over 1,000 carers ranging from young adults to senior citizens through peer support gatherings and educational programs.

Also, by strategically serving as a member on several national committees—including the National Committee for Dementia Management and Advisory Committee on Youth Policy—under the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Gihyun, together with young carers at N-Inbun, was able to bring the young carer agenda to the national government, enlightening key stakeholders from the Presidential Secretariat, Ministry of Health and Welfare, and Youth Policy Coordination Committee on the urgent need to extend legal support for young carers and establish new social welfare infrastructure to actively identify and aid young carers in complex circumstances.

His efforts led to the Korean government's announcement in February 2022 of the "Strategies for Establishing Support Measures for Young Carers," through which the government first acknowledged society's responsibility to unburden young carers—aged 13 to 34—and recognized the lack of support structure in existing welfare systems. Previously unrecognized and invisible, young carers were unable to access any social welfare benefits, but with this announcement, the government expanded the coverage of three major welfare programs—Long-Term Care Insurance for the Elderly, Home Care and Household Support Services, and Emergency Welfare Support System—to include young carers, directly contributing to a significant reduction in care burdens.

In the following years, Gihyun worked closely with legislators at the National Assembly to propose and enact the Support Act for Young Carers—the "Act on Support for Children and Youths in Crisis, Including Family Caregivers," which finally passed the National Assembly in February 2025.

Now, Gihyun is driving Korean society to advocate for the “Universal Right to Care" at a critical moment of transition into the super-aged era. Mobilizing all the networks and partnerships he built over time, Gihyun is bringing together hundreds of carers to the same table with policymakers and field experts at the Care Citizens' Assembly. Through the assembly, he is creating a circular structure at the social welfare system level, where caregivers of various generations and experiences collaborate with field specialists to develop concrete, highly effective policies that can be delivered to policymakers and government officials. As policymakers themselves increasingly recognize the limitations of Korea's traditional top-down care policies, this collaborative structure directly positions caregivers as agents of social change, giving them an active role in reshaping the systems that affect their lives.

Gihyun and the Assembly envision a world where networks of mutual care are created, the care capacity of the entire community increases, and citizens with caregiving experiences directly create changes in systems and policies.

Gihyun grew up living with his father after his parents divorced when he was in elementary school. His father worked as a plasterer, and from middle school onward, Gihyun took on part-time jobs, each living a rather independent life. However, at 20, his life took a drastic unexpected turn when his father suddenly collapsed at work and was rushed to intensive care. From that moment, Gihyun became his father’s primary caregiver. His father faced multiple life-threatening situations and was later diagnosed with early-onset dementia in his 50s. Overwhelmed by financial and time constraints, Gihyun cared for his father in isolation, with not much public or community support. Although extremely painful, this experience led him to discover the profound value of caregiving, fostering a new, interdependent relationship with his father.

Over time, Gihyun transformed his personal struggles and caregiving experiences into broader social inquiries in his communities. In Gwanak, marginalized urban district where he grew up, he began working as a community facilitator at People’s Solidarity of Gwanak, a grassroots nonprofit that provided direct support to vulnerable community members. Later, at the Seoul Youth Support Center, he leveraged his creative skills to lead participatory projects that aim to empower the participants, such as collaborative short films exploring the challenges faced by isolated and reclusive youth.

Determined to address the lack of support for caregivers and the absence of a safety net for both caregivers and family members that receive care, Gihyun sought out others in similar situations. He visited community centers, public health clinics, and university hospital lobbies, but in a society where caregiving was seen as a private family duty, people were extremely reluctant to speak publicly about their struggles. For young adults in their most "productive" years, revealing their caregiving responsibilities was perceived especially as exposing a hidden vulnerability.

To end the vicious cycle and inspire others, Gihyun published <Becoming a Father of My Father>, candidly sharing his experiences as a young carer, analyzing the structural roots of caregiving challenges, and offering insights gained through his journey. His openness encouraged other young carers to come forward. However, at the time, no official research or statistics on young carers existed in Korea, leading welfare experts to dismiss their struggles as a rare anomaly rather than a systemic issue. To challenge this perception, Gihyun wrote a second book, <New Wave Care>, amplifying the firsthand stories of young carers and reframing caregiving experience as a source of insights rather than a mere burden. Building on this vision together with fellow carers, he founded his organization N-Inbun, emphasizing that caregiving should not be an isolated struggle but a shared societal responsibility.

Although Gihyun’s work initially stemmed from his personal experience as a young carer, he soon recognized that the issue was deeply interconnected with broader caregiving challenges and practices in Korean society. Observing how caregivers of various generations and backgrounds gathered at N-Inbun events and programs to share their experiences in a safe space, he saw the urgent need for a comprehensive support system.

Moving forward, Gihyun envisions a society where caregiving is a natural part of daily conversations, where caregiving relationships function like a “passing baton,” and where people can imagine their life course through the lens of care.