IT isn’t easy quitting a lucrative job at JPMorgan Chase & Co. to become a middle-aged college freshman.

    David Lim mulled the idea for seven years before he finally left the bank’s South Korea unit in February, heading back to school to start a new career as a physical therapist. For the 43-year-old father of one, South Korea’s shrinking financial industry and booming health care sector made the decision to pursue his passion a little less daunting.

    “Because South Korea is aging fast, people are growing more and more health conscious,” said Lim, who left his role in banking sales at JPMorgan to join the health sciences program at the University of Otago in New Zealand. After graduation, he plans to eventually start his own business in South Korea.

    Lim is among a growing number of bankers turning to stronger segments of South Korea’s job market as the nation’s financial industry grapples with weak profitability, tepid economic growth and rising corporate defaults.

    Financial sector employment shrank by 3.3 percent in the year through October 2015, versus gains of at least 1.9 percent over similar periods in Hong Kong, New York and Britain.

    Employment in South Korea’s health care and technology industries, meanwhile, has been rising amid strong demand from a graying society and President Park Geun-hye’s campaign to create new growth engines in Asia’s fourth-largest economy.

    The shift is also visible in the nation’s US$1.3 trillion stock market, with shares of health care and technology companies leading gains among 11 industry groups this year.

    “I have a positive view on the IT and health care sectors in the long-term,” said Lee Kyoung-min, a Seoul-based analyst at Daishin Securities Co. “They are probably two of the few industries that can actually grow in today’s economy.”

    South Korean health care businesses are booming as the nation ages. The health and social work segment of gross domestic product expanded by 8.1 percent in the second quarter, versus 3.3 percent for the economy as a whole. On the employment side, health care jobs climbed 1.3 percent in the 12 months through October 2015. (SD-Agencies)