KB News Desk
Forget YouTuber or doctor. South Korean teenagers still dream most of becoming teachers, while younger children are setting their sights on careers in sports.
Teacher was the top dream job among both middle and high school students in 2025, according to a report released Sunday by the Education Ministry and the Korean Educational Development Institute.
The profession has held the No. 1 spot among teenagers every year since the career education survey became an official national statistic in 2015.
Among middle school students, athlete ranked second and doctor third. High school students chose being a nurse as their second-most desired career, followed by biologist or researcher.
The latter recorded one of the biggest jumps, climbing from No. 7 in 2024 to No. 3 last year.
Elementary school students had different ambitions. Athlete topped their rankings, followed by doctor and content creator.
Teacher had been the most popular choice among elementary school students in 2015, but athlete took the top spot in both 2020 and 2025.
The findings were published in the 10th edition of Reading Korean Education Through Data, which compared the three most popular career choices across elementary, middle and high schools in 2015, 2020 and 2025.
The data also showed that fewer students appear to know what they want to become. The share naming a specific dream job fell by more than 10 percentage points across all school levels over the past decade, reaching 78.1 percent among elementary students, 59.9 percent among middle schoolers and 71.3 percent among high schoolers in 2025.
Plans after graduation are also shifting. The share of high school students hoping to attend college fell to 64.9 percent in 2025 from 77.3 percent in 2023, while the proportion seeking employment more than doubled to 15.6 percent.
