Getting old in Korea

By Semoon Chang

I was not able to see the highly popular movie “Late Blossom” that portrayed the daily lives of the elderly in Korea, who were poor but lovely. My understanding is that it cost less than $1 million to make the movie, but it became popular over time. I only saw a segment of the movie that became available on YouTube. Life for elderly Koreans can be beautiful for some who are rich, but brutal for others who are poor.

For more than 2,500 years, Korea has been known as the “Courteous country in the East,” meaning that people in Korea, located east of China, are very courteous to one another.

As the Korean economy grew rapidly since the 1960s, Korea appears to have transformed from “Courteous country in the East” to the “Discourteous country in the East,” meaning that the people in Korea are no longer very courteous. If this is not an accurate explanation, how can one explain the high suicide rate among the elderly of Korea?

You see more than 80 out of 100,000 Koreans 65 years and older commit suicide each year, while the average of all OECD countries is barely more than 20. The elderly suicide rate in China and Japan is well below that of Korea.

The life of the Korean elderly who are poor is so tough that it has been widely reported not only in news media in Korea, but also in the news media outside of this country. Let me highlight some of those reports.

A March 16, 2015, online article by Shuan Sim in the International Business Times said, “South Korea registered the highest suicide rates among OECD countries for a decade straight.” Citing a study by the Korea Labor Institute, the Sim article states 48.6 percent of the country’s elderly were in poverty in 2011, defined as earning 50 percent or less of the median household income.

Korea has not ignored the problem of the high rate of elderly suicide. The Dec. 7, 2013, online version of The Economist reports that Korea established the Korea Suicide Prevention Center that trained 8,000 caregivers to spot signs of potential elderly suicide. It had been a long tradition in Korea that parents try their best to educate their children, and in turn, the children take care of their parents when they get old. With the rapidly growing economy, however, Sim states, “Attitudes have changed: only a third of South Koreans think that children should support their aging parents, down from 90 percent in 1998, according to the national statistics bureau.”

In a June 20, 2014, article for the Washington Post, which is re-printed in the online version of The Guardian, Chico Harlan describes the life of half of the Korea’s elderly: “Some live in crumbling hillside neighborhoods that lack running water. Others wait in line at soup kitchens where there is no young face in sight. The worst-off comb through garbage, collect cardboard and paper and lug it to rubbish dumps, where they can receive several dollars for a pile. It’s common in central Seoul to see elderly people gathering scraps.”

Another well-written article on the tough life of the Korean elderly was prepared by Yena Lee, a then postgraduate student in journalism and international affairs at the Paris Institute of Political Science, and was posted on thediplomat.com on Nov. 28, 2014. President Park Geun-hye made a pre-election promise related to the basic pension program that it would provide $190 per month to all senior citizens. The program was finally adopted on July 25, 2014, and provides a monthly allowance between $19 and $190 to the majority of seniors.

One problem with the basic pension program is the way income is calculated for benefit-seekers. According to Lee, “If an elderly citizen is in contact with his immediate family, it is assumed that he receives support from them,” making the elderly unqualified for the allowance. Falsely, “The system assumes that children financially support their elderly parents in accordance with Confucian culture.”

Lee concludes, “A 2012 parliamentary study states that economic difficulties are the main reason for suicidal thoughts among seniors. South Korea’s elderly suicide rate is estimated at 12 persons per day, or four times the OECD average.” The Dec. 7, 2013, article in The Economist reminds us, “When illness strikes, some choose to end their own lives, like one of the couples in ‘Late Blossom.’”

Clearly, President Park and members of the National Assembly should think again how they might take care of the elderly who contributed so much to the “Miracle on Han River.” The minimum they must do is to provide adequate housing with many opportunities for the elderly to improve their quality of life. If political leaders are too short-sighted to develop such policies, global conglomerates such as Samsung and Hyundai should provide such services for the elderly.

Semoon Chang is the director of the Gulf Coast Center for Impact Studies.