Cryptocurrencies seemed to be a way to disrupt that social order.

“There is no true opportunity in South Korea for the average young person,” said Kim Han-gyeol, 23, who graduated from a vocational school and became a part-time software developer for an e-book company.

She lives with her parents and works part time at Dunkin’ Donuts, studying English online at night.

At first, she made a lot of money investing in cryptocurrencies. She used a few thousand dollars she made to buy nice clothes for herself and her mother, and dreamed of starting a coffee shop with her loot. Then, she lost nearly all of it.

“I felt a sense of shame when I lost money on my Bitcoin investments, not once but twice because of my greed to make a fortune in one go,” she said. Even still, she added, she’ll stick to digital coins.

“There is nowhere else to go to recover my losses anyway,” she said.

Being young in South Korea can be defeating and stifling. To succeed is to get either a government position or a job at one of a small but powerful group of family-owned conglomerates that control most of the products Koreans use. This requires getting into one of a handful of exclusive universities, a feat that has become so difficult that many young people delay applying for several years.

Income inequality is among the worst in Asia. Youth unemployment is 10.5 percent and has hovered near that figure for the past five years even as overall unemployment is 3.4 percent.

Young Koreans are called the “sampo generation,” a portmanteau referring to the three things they have given up on: courtship, marriage and family.