Jin Young-hae is a made-up name. It is not her story. A few days ago, this South Korean mother explained to the BBC, on condition of anonymity, what led her to wear a blue jumpsuit – entirely voluntarily – and spend hours locked in a tiny, bare-bones cell, not much bigger than a cell. I had a closet and no company, no mobile phone or laptop inside. Only my thoughts. The only connection to the outside of her idiosyncratic prison was a small hole in the door where food was occasionally distributed.

It may sound strange, but there is one word to explain it: Hikikomori.

Purpose: Isolate yourself from the worldMs Jin’s choice may seem far-fetched, but she is not the only one in South Korea to have made a similar decision. The BBC spoke to other prisoners and volunteers. As well as requiring anonymity, they all share two key characteristics. First, they are parents of young people in their teens to thirties.

Second, they have decided to participate in a special program that will keep them in solitary confinement cells for a short period of time. And this last statement can be understood in the most literal sense. Jin and the other participants are kept in small rooms where they cannot even take a cell phone.

But why? Understand. Jin or Park Han-sil, one of the pseudonyms used by the BBC to report a real case, are mothers of young South Koreans who also share another characteristic: they have isolated themselves from the world. Jin is the mother of a 24-year-old who lives in her room, neglecting her hygiene and food. Park has a slightly older son, 26, who decided to cut off all contact with society seven years ago. He now barely leaves his room and refuses to take the medication prescribed by doctors.

By voluntarily restricting themselves, Ms. Jin or Ms. Park try to understand their children better, putting themselves in their shoes to an extreme extent and, above all, seeking means to communicate better with them. “I wondered what I did wrong… it was very painful,” Jin, 50, admits. Now, and after her time in solitary confinement, she claims to have gained “some clarity.” Park also admits that isolation helped her understand her son’s feelings. “I realized it was important to accept your life without forcing you into a certain mold.”

“The experience of incarceration”Neither Park nor Jin decided to lock themselves up in their homes for a day. Theirs were planned experiences and isolation, carried out in the rooms of the Happiness Factory. prisoners They come to experience “imprisonment” in their bodies.

To do this, they may wear uniforms, leave their phones and laptops behind and retreat to bare-walled cells, unaccompanied. The BBC reported that since April, other parents have joined the 13-week special education programme funded by organisations such as the Korean Youth Foundation or the Blue Whale Rescue Centre.

The program has a clear and complex goal: to show these fathers and mothers how to better communicate with their children. To do so, it involves a peculiar experience, a three-day period in which participants spend time in rooms that mimic an isolation cell in Gangwon province.

Keyword: Hikikomori. Jin and Park’s mothers HikikomoriA term coined decades ago in Japan to describe young people who, at a certain point in their lives, decide to isolate themselves almost completely, cutting off communication with the world beyond their home or room.

This phenomenon is not new, but it is serious. At least according to the estimates used by the authorities. Recently, the South Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare conducted a survey among 15,000 young people between the ages of 19 and 34, and found that more than 5% of them were living in isolation. If these figures were extrapolated to the country as a whole, it would reveal that there are hundreds of thousands of people in a similar situation in South Korea: just over half a million (540,000).

Understanding isolationPark admits that the program allows parents of these young people to better understand the reason for the quarantine, such as reading notes written by others Hikikomori It helped him understand his own son’s silence. The South Korean government also has studies like the Happiness Factory that help give a clear idea about the isolation phenomenon among young people without having to go through an experience like that.

A study by the South Korean Ministry of Health shows that 24.1% of young people aged 19-34 who decided to disconnect from the world did so because of difficulties in finding a job, 23.5% because of problems with relationships, and 24.8% because of family or health issues. In the background is the competitive South Korean society, where parents take their children to academies from a very young age so that they can enter the most prestigious universities in the country. South Korea also stands out with its marathon study days.

Worry beyond home.Incoming Hikikomori It is a serious enough phenomenon to cause concern beyond families. In 2023, the Government launched a campaign to encourage single young people to leave home and “reintegrate into society”, and did not hesitate to offer payments of 450 euros for young people up to the age of 24. At the time, there were rumors that hundreds of thousands of people in the country would be living in isolation.

Advantages of taking a break. Their mothers and fathers Hikikomori They are not the only ones seeking voluntary isolation in South Korea. There are those in the country who have decided to limit themselves by choice, even paying hundreds of euros for the experience, in order to take a break from their busy routines.

This was reported by the CBC network in 2018, which reported on the case of Suk-won Kang, a 57-year-old engineer from Seoul who paid $578 to spend seven days at Prison Inside Me, a centre in Hongcheon. During his strange holiday, Kang wore a uniform and was kept alone in a five-square-metre cell. He was not completely alone. There were 13 other similar guests in the facility.

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