Elderly suicides in South Korea: Poor spirits

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

THEIR son-in-law’s visit was a customary show of filial piety for late November. But the homemade kimchi he brought to last his ailing in-laws through the winter would not be needed. “I don’t want to be a burden on my children”, wrote the 82-year-old in a note he left in the sealed house, along with two funeral pictures and a will. Media outlets were quick to note the parallels with the death of an elderly couple in “Late Blossom”, a rare Korean film on growing old that was a box-office hit in 2011.

That year more than 4,000 South Koreans over the age of 65 committed suicide: a rate five times higher than in 1990, and nearly four times the rich-country average (see chart). Yet these “silent suicides” rarely get the attention that teenage ones do, says Ahn Yong-min, a psychiatrist at Seoul National University (SNU) and head of the Korea Association of Suicide Prevention. Young deaths are seen as a cry for help and attract plenty of government funds, though their number is on a par with the OECD average. Attempted suicides among the old are ten times higher. It does not help that self-inflicted harm is not covered by the health-care system.

Many elderly suicides are carefully planned. That should make them easier to prevent than the more impulsive actions of the young, says Kim Yeong-sook of the Korea Suicide Prevention Centre. This year, part of a 2.5 billion won ($2.3m) budget for elderly suicide prevention—the first of its kind—helped train 8,000 caregivers to spot signs. In Seoul a “telecheck” service connects seniors to local volunteers, who call them regularly. Many of the city’s 29 state-run senior welfare centres deliver daily packed meals to their homes. They pick up those wanting to visit the centres but are too frail to travel in alone, such as Kim Dong-wan, a 77-year-old regular, who comes for the gardening, calligraphy sessions (run by seniors too) and laughs. “Nothing like this exists near my hometown”, he says. It is one of the reasons he left the countryside to live with his son.

But few have that luxury. Last year only a fifth of the rural elderly were living with their children. From the 1960s the country’s growing cities lured youngsters. Rather than invest in social welfare, the government “chose to sacrifice the family”, says Eun Ki-soo, a sociologist at SNU. It kept wages low and encouraged investment in education. Parents obliged, assuming that, in the Confucian tradition, they could rely on their children in old age.

Yet today half of South Korea’s elderly are in relative poverty, according to the OECD, which ranks the country’s seniors as the most destitute among its rich-country members. Cramped flats cannot accommodate three-generation households. And attitudes have changed: only a third of South Koreans think that children should support their ageing parents, down from 90% in 1998, according to the national statistics bureau. Yet in 2013 just a third of the old received a state pension, introduced in 1988. A basic old-age pension plan passed last month (set at 200,000 won a month for the poorest 70%) and is payable from the age of 65. Those who can, return to work—often as car-park attendants, street cleaners and security guards.

When illness strikes, some choose to end their own lives, like one of the couples in “Late Blossom”. The ten-session course on “well-dying” at Mapo Senior Welfare Centre in Seoul includes a screening of the film to discuss approaches to death. Participants write a will and their own tombstone epitaph, visit a crematorium and have their funeral picture taken. Yet the firm hope is that they will choose to go a different way.

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