Boasting an overgrown beard and grey wavy hair, 65-year-old Kim Chil-doo glared into the wall, poised and confidant, as he walked on runway with young models at an academy in Seoul earlier this month.
Mr. Kim became South Korea’s first senior fashion model last year, realising his lifelong dream with a charismatic debut at Seoul Fashion Week.
“This was what I wanted to do when I was young, but gave up to make money, and I thought maybe it’s worth trying even now,” Mr. Kim said. “And I’m glad I did it — being a model is really fun. Senior? It’s just a label.”
In a country with the world’s fastest ageing population, many elderly South Koreans like Mr. Kim are venturing into unconventional late career opportunities.
Seniors have flocked to modelling schools after Mr. Kim’s success. Others have become YouTube stars or signed up to teach Korean to K-pop fans overseas.
The trend has offered fresh hopes to the elderly, many of whom take low-paying, blue collar jobs to support themselves after retiring. Almost half of South Korean baby boomers live in poverty — the highest among members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development .
On a recent weekday afternoon, about two dozen people, mostly in their late 50s to 60s, gathered at a welfare centre in Songpa for catwalk training, hoping to emulate Mr. Kim, now an up-and-coming star in commercials and fashion magazines.
‘Reviving my youth’
For You Sung-lae, 59, her unfulfilled childhood dream of becoming an actress and her interest in fashion led her to sign up for the course. “Learning modelling feels like reviving my youth that I could not enjoy as I got married and gave birth at a very young age,” Ms. Yoo said.
Lim Sung-min, who represents Mr. Kim and is a former model himself, said his agency is seeking to bolster its ranks of senior models, aiming to cater to the fast-growing elderly industry.
Some firms and local governments are seeking to harness the older generation’s untapped potential and help them start a new chapter of life.
Cho Yong-min was a public policy student at Princeton University when he floated a small language exchange project between retired South Korean professionals and foreigners in 2014. He started recruiting elderly volunteers, linking them with Korean students at Princeton and Yale.
“They were too talented to play pool there every day, with so much social and career experience to share,” said Mr. Cho, who recently graduated from the school.