For these young people in privileged parts of the world, the pandemic was an opportunity

SEOUL, South Korea — Jung Gyu-ho became an inventive young capitalist in the middle of a pandemic.

South Korea was confronting an emerging second wave of COVID-19 cases. An acquaintance of his father’s had pivoted his cosmetics factory to churn out face masks that were suddenly in huge demand. The man asked Jung, 23, who had recently quit his semiconductor factory job to go back to school, to set up an online direct-to-consumer sales operation.

Jung already had a tidy sum in the stock market and was collecting rent on an apartment unit he owned while living in the factory dorms or with his parents. Now, in just a month, the new mask business had racked up more than 400 million won in sales — about $350,000.

“Am I going to be rich?” he thought.

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated economies and gutted jobs across the developed and developing world. The loss of economic opportunities has hit young people, more likely to be employed in precarious sectors and in tenuous positions with fewer years’ experience, far worse than older adults in stable jobs.

But the devastation hasn’t hit evenly. Although the unprecedented shutdown and economic disruptions have plunged much of the world’s poor youth into direr straits, for young people in privileged regions, the cataclysmic changes wrought by the pandemic have offered a rare chance for a jump-start or boost in entrepreneurship, investment and creativity. Much like COVID-19 vaccines — with rich nations already offering booster shots while poor