[WHY] Millennial parents choose memories over mortgages, setting up temporary homes abroad

Park Chan-mi, a 41-year-old mother, poses for a photo with her twin children in Bangunan Sultan Abdul Samad, a historic building in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Jan. 17. [PARK CHAN-MI]

 
For Park Chan-mi, a 41-year-old mother based in Gyeonggi, stepping away from home for an extended stay abroad is both exhilarating and refreshing — for her twin children as much as for herself. What began as a one-month family stay in Bali in 2020 has since evolved into an annual ritual.  
 
Since that first trip, Park and her children have made Vancouver, Chiang Mai and Kuala Lumpur their temporary homes, with Kuala Lumpur drawing them back again this year. Compared to typical short-term trips, a one-month stay offered a much richer range of experiences. In Malaysia, for example, Park’s children witnessed people eating with their hands and wearing hijabs — things they had previously only seen in videos — allowing them to develop a firsthand understanding of cultural differences and respect.
 

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Park Chan-mi’s daughter tries eating Roti tissue, a popular, paper-thin and crispy Malaysian sweet flatbread, at NZ Curry House, a local restaurant in Kuala Lumpur, on Dec. 16, 2025. [PARK CHAN-MI]

 
“Experiences that would have required careful planning in Korea became everyday choices here in Kuala Lumpur — a large, multicultural city that felt like a giant playground of distinct places and atmospheres,” Park said, noting a Batik workshop to experience the traditional craft and a visit to the Central Market filled with exquisite local products. “I was also able to break away from a schedule built around constant shuttling — pickups, drop-offs and moving from one cram school to the next — which made it feel like we could finally breathe.”
 
A similar desire led 37-year-old Cho Ah-ram to Guam for a month last summer. There, she and her then four-year-old daughter took a relaxed approach to travel — spending time on the beach, taking boat rides out to sea and touring the island’s southern region. Her daughter attended a local school on weekdays, while weekends were packed with activities.  
 
“Rather than treating English as just another subject to study, my daughter experienced it as a real tool for everyday communication,” Cho said. "I’m truly satisfied that she was able to learn English as something you live with, not just study."
 
Driven by the belief that real-world experiences are as valuable as classroom learning, many parents, like Park and Cho, are choosing extended stays in unfamiliar places, despite the challenges of caring for young children in new environments and the surging financial pressures of raising a child.  
 

Mila Jin, far right, playfully poses for a photo with her son and husband during their sandboarding tour in Port Stephens in New South Wales, Australia, on Aug. 11, 2024. She made a month-long trip with her son to Sydney in the year. [MILA JIN]

 
From luxury to a new lifestyle



Until recent years, extended travel was largely a luxury reserved for a select few. But with shifting lifestyles and evolving priorities among young parents, it has become a new way of life, especially as they see travel as an essential experience.  
 
The shift in mindset was triggered by rising incomes and broader overseas experiences backed by government policy. When millennials — born between 1981 and 1996 — were coming of age in the 1990s, Korea’s real gross national income per capita had reached the low 20 million won  ($13, 700) range — far higher than the 1 to 5 million won in the 1960s and 1970s. Coupled with the government’s 1989 easing of restrictions on overseas travel, access to more purchasing power created an environment that allowed millennials to have greater exposure to international travel than their parents’ generation.
 
Reflecting the surge in travel, Korea’s tourism trade deficit expanded sharply, from $282.4 million in 1995 — the earliest data available from the Korea Tourism Organization — to $6.24 billion in 2005, underscoring the rapid rise in Koreans venturing overseas as millennials were growing up.
 
“Parents in their 30s and 40s grew up in a far more advanced economy than their own parents, enjoying higher per capita incomes that allowed them to travel from an early age,” said Prof. Kim Nam-jo, who teaches at Hanyang University’s Graduate School of International Tourism, noting that for this generation, travel is not something to be compromised.  
 
“Also, having grown up in the smartphone era, they can easily access a wealth of travel-related information, and exposure to global lifestyles through social networks has made them more open to experiencing diverse ways of living and traveling like locals.”
 
The shift in travel mindset has also helped fuel the boom in extended journeys.  
 
“For Koreans, travel tended to be very fast-paced and short-term, rushing to see as many attractions as possible in a single day,” said Lee Hoon, Director of Tourism Research Institute, Hanyang University. “But as travelers became more experienced, their approach shifted to staying longer in one place, exploring the local lifestyle and getting a deeper sense of the region.” He added that this trend was reinforced during the Covid-19 pandemic, when people widely embraced camping — a slower, more immersive style of travel in a single area.  
 

Logan Lee, who traveled to Sydney with his mother for a month in 2024, experiences a bird landing on his head at Circular Quay on Aug. 10, 2024. [MILA JIN]

Lifelong memories over money

 
Millennial parents’ prioritization of experiences and inspiration is clear in their travel stories, even as many struggle with the rising cost of raising a child that is forcing younger generations to delay marriage and having children.  
 
The financial burden of child rearing was cited as the biggest reason for having no plans to have children or hesitating about childbirth by 41.1 percent of married men and 34.7 percent of married women, according to a survey released in early February by the Korea Population, Health and Welfare Association.  
 
The sharp rise in education costs reflects such concerns, with expenses having surged 60 percent in the past decade — reaching 29.19 trillion won in 2024 —even as the number of students continues to decline, according to government data released in January. The increase was most pronounced at the elementary school level, where private education spending jumped 74.1 percent, driven largely by expenditures on arts, sports and enrichment programs.
 

Park Ha-ni, a digital creator in her 30s, and her husband pose with their daughter in Seoubong Peak, a small volcanic hill in Jeju Island, on June 11, 2025. [PARK HA-NI]

 
Yet for many couples with children, the value of shared experiences often outweighs financial strain.  
 
“People say that the years before a child enters elementary school are the golden period for building financial assets, but my husband and I believed we were creating memories that would give us strength for the rest of our lives,” said Park Ha-ni, a digital creator in her 30s who also goes by Ppomine. With her 25-month-old daughter, she has already gone on three extended trips to Jeju and one to Damyang, South Jeolla.
 
“We live in Busan, where it’s hard to even see snow, so being able to show her snow and take her sledding, which she truly enjoyed, was especially meaningful.” She added that she loved seeing her child grow up surrounded by nature, experiencing the canola flower fields and cherry blossom tunnels that are famous on Jeju Island.  
 
The same was true for 34-year-old Mila Jin, who went on a monthlong trip to Sydney with her six-year-old son in 2024. “I wanted my child to see that people live differently in other places,” Jin said. “So I made sure he tried as many different activities as possible, and sometimes, we took time to sit at Bondi Beach for half a day just watching people.”  
 

Logan Lee and his father at the Sydney Observatory on Aug. 10, 2024. [MILA JIN]

 
The trip left a lasting impact on her son. After seeing children his age skateboarding and swimming — activities he had always assumed were meant for older kids — he returned home eager to learn both, even setting his sights on joining the national skateboarding team. With hopes to communicate more freely with locals, he also returned home, asking to attend an English-language kindergarten after years of resistance.  
 
Experts project that the lifestyle of living away from home will strengthen in the coming years, but under specific themes.
 
“Recently, motivations for extended stays have increasingly become theme-driven,” said Go Gye-seong, professor at Kyungnam University’s Department of Travel, Aviation and Tourism. “Activities such as yoga, surfing, cooking and farming are especially popular,” he explained, noting active local government programs designed to attract more visitors from other regions.  
 
“At the same time, more effort should be made to draw people from overseas, particularly overseas Koreans, for extended stays,” he added, as many are interested in connecting with the regions tied to their ancestors’ roots.

BY JIN MIN-JI [jin.minji@joongang.co.kr]