The Struggle of a Patty
- Edward Lin
- Oct 6, 2018
- 3 min read
Due to the rapid aging in Korean society, the average age for Korean workforce has also been increasing. In order words, more people who passed their retiring age continue to work in order to provide support to their families. As studies shown, the percentage of people older than 65 in Korea was 7.2% in 2000 and about 15% in 2015(Choi 2015, 2). This rapid aging creates a great issue in Korean demography because aged people that are still capable of working is facing the problem of not making enough income to provide support for both their children and their parents. Few of these problems are highlighted in the drama Chief Kim as discussed below.
An example from the drama Chief Kim regarding lonely elderly people is that Choo Nam-Ho, the supervisor for the business department in TQ, sent his wife and daughter off to Canada. This makes Choo Nam-Ho living alone in what is considered his “home”. In episode five, Mr. Choo was on the phone with his wife. We, as audiences, learned that Mr. Choo is very distant from his family because they don’t come back to Korea very often and he does not communicate with his daughter at all. This scenario perfectly reflects the middle to higher class families in Korea as they have the economic ability to send their children to foreign country for higher quality of education. This will cause the number of elderly people living by themselves increase dramatically in the future, more precisely, tripled in the next 30 years.(Noh 2017)
An example of middle aged man having too much pressure is that a senior in TQ company named Oh Se-Myung was trying to take his life for being shamed publicly by TQ, he was then convinced to remain strong and continue fighting. The reason why he did not jump off the building is because of his family, especially the thought of his daughter not have a father in the future. Similarly. many middle aged Korean man who have twice as much responsibilities on their shoulder, Mr. Oh valued work more than almost everything in the world but there is one thing that is not irreplaceable, family.
Korea is facing a major demographic issue of having very low birth rate as a result in aging society that can cause a severe damage in the current and future Korean society. In the future, more proportion of elderly people will be living in poverty as the number of working individuals and family income decrease(Jeon et al 2017).
Here is an interesting video that can help you to understand the aging society in Korea in greater depth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt4QGNcKfX8&frags=pl%2Cwn
Word count: 440
Questions
1) How do you think the Korean government can do to solve the issue of middle aged individuals having too much responsibilities on their shoulder?
2) What laws or rules can be implemented to increase the birth rate to balance out the aging society?
Citations
- Choi. “The society issues in Korea” Retrieved from Lingnan University(2007) 1-28
- Jeob, Noguchi, Kwon, Ito, and Tamiya. “Disability, poverty, and role of the basic livelihood security system on health services utilization among the elderly in South Korea”Social Science & Medicine 178 (2017) 175-183
- “Over next 30 years, numbers of traditional families will halve, elderly people living alone will triple.”Hankyoreh. http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/790868.html / (accessed10/6/2018)
(All images/screenshots were taken from Dramafever and no copyright or infringement intended)
Of course, there will be lots of actions that government can take in order to balance out the elders vs. new born situation and the extreme high rate of elders in Korea. But none of these will be able to solve the actual problem. I think instead of trying to figure out policies, it will be better to figure out the root of the problem. The problem is formed because of the society itself. To survive in Korean society, it is hard, especially for those who are not in upper class level. As Elliott said, each part of problem is connected with each other, it is impossible to say that” oh, we are having this new policy to in order…
Hey everyone,
Edward, your citations are not formatted correctly - please, please refer to the citation guide and if you have any questions come ask me or Dr. Saeji, because this will cost you points on your assignments.
Those of you who have worked on demographic issues will know that solving them is much like starting a Rube Goldberg machine - one adjustment sets the next thing, sets the next thing in motion. How does the government implement a solution that will be both alleviative in the short-term and not damaging in the long-term? Resources are limited, so you take from one to give to the other. It’s a delicate balancing game. Tori’s and Ashley’s observations in this sense are…
I believe that this long standing issue that the Korean government is facing is not that easily solved. I agree with Torialina, the idea of creating more retirement homes for the elderly to congregate them should lessen the loneliness and create a sense of community for them. As the video shown in class, many of the Korean elderlies are living alone which is really saddening to see when they feel like they don't have a support system. Data also shows that a great number of suicide rates in Korea actually lands in the elderly population. Moreover, housing is a common issue that is often mentioned in the drama. Rentals are so expensive in Seoul that even Chief Kim is resortin…
As many government programs take years to implement and even more years to see the effects of, I do not feel as if the Korean government can do anything that will have a significant effect in the near future. A small solution that could possibly help the younger generation put less pressure on their parents is to build more cheap housing. This way millennials and students will not put the strain of finding housing on their parents shoulders. As for the older generation, building more housing specifically for elders could help with their housing problems as well as give them a sense of community. Although both of these ideas are counter to the multi-generational housing that has been common in…
In regards to question 2, I think this really hard to say and execute since it requires time and money to get a satisfying result on what you may want. Marriage and having kids will be one of the most benefit action to process for having to balance the old and young ratio. However, one of the most concerning aspect in Korea is people prefer to work and raise themselves to a much higher position. With this in mind to many of the adults, the thought of having a kid will be terrible for them. Not only that but even marriage can be scary for them as it might affect their work, and that is the reason why many prefe…