Aging in community and local NGOs: Empowering marginalized older women in South Korea

ABSTRACT

This article is based on an embedded case study of selected older people’s self-help groups in urban South Korea, which aim to assist community-dwelling older adults, particularly poor and marginalized women, to age in their community and remain active and contributing members. The study highlights the importance of the role and capacity of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as partner organizations. Implications are important for other aging societies, particularly in Asia, where older women have been often confined by patriarchal oppression.

KEYWORDS:

• Aging in community
• empowerment
• local communities
• civil society’s capacities
• Asia

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all participants in this study, the senior members, community workers, and staff members of the NGOs concerned, who were willing to spend hours and days with me for this research. I also thank the President of HelpAge Korea, who cheerfully accepted my idea of assessing their initiative and kindly arranged for my visits and interviews with the selected case communities. Helpful comments from anonymous reviewers are also appreciated. This research was permitted by the HUFS Institutional Review Board (HIRB-201512-HR-004) of the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Early findings for one of the two cases addressed here were first published in Yang (2017).

Funding

This study was supported by a research fund from the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

Notes

¹ A society is classified as aging, aged, and super-aged when the share of those aged 65 and above accounts for 7%, 14%, and 20% respectively of the entire population.

² The Welfare of the Aged Act was enacted in 1981 but mainly targeted the poor and needy elderly.

³ Korea’s aggregate public social expenditure was only about 10.4% of GDP in 2016, merely half of the OECD average of 21% (OECD social expenditure data, accessed October 24, 2016).

⁴ While only 2.5% of the total population receive public assistance (Basic Livelihood [BL] benefits), about 6% of the older population aged 65 and over receive such assistance, accounting for about a third of BL beneficiaries. Two-thirds of them are women (Statistics Korea, KOSIS, accessed November 27, 2015). Korea stands a low 82nd out of 96 countries in the world in terms of old age income security, according to the 2015 Global AgeWatch Index (HelpAge International, 2015).

⁵ As many as 53.6% of the elderly living alone currently live with an income below the minimum livelihood, and the rate of skipping meals due to poverty is 24%, more than twice the equivalent percentage recorded among those living with a spouse (Chung, 2015, p. 5).

⁶ While family connection and support from adult children are weakest among those elderly living alone, their monthly participation in social activities also turns out to be low (only 58.6%) compared to those living with a spouse (67%) or with adult children (71.4%) (Chung, 2015, p. 6).

⁷ The use of the term “self-help” in the HAK initiative could be misleading, as its readers might expect financial independence and sustainability to be enjoyed by individual participants in the elderly group or to result from the elderly group’s management and activities (or indeed both). This, however, turns out to be nowhere close to the meaning of the English term.

⁸ A few video clips on the activities of GOLDEN are available on the Internet. Among these, two video clips record members’ chats on selected issues such as “should we or should we not live together with adult children?” and “children versus children-in-law.”

⁹ NVivo refers to any coded source materials as “references.” For example, one source (e.g., an interview) can have as many “references” as researchers may find transcribed words and sentences deserving to be coded.

¹⁰ It also turns out that the membership fee for other available elderly communities, such as Elderly Halls and Senior Welfare Centers, serves as a barrier to participation to some low-income persons, suggesting the need to fill the gap to accommodate these most deprived older women (from interviews). As of the end of 2014, about 64,000 Elderly Halls exist across the nation, i.e., almost one for every 100 older persons aged 65 and above, but the usage rate is low at 25.9%. The use of Senior Welfare Centers, 344 in total number, which also provide leisure, exercise, and educational and activity programs, are mostly located in big cities and towns, and the usage rate is also low (approximately 9%) (MoHW, 2015, p. 5).

¹¹ This is recognized to be one of the nation’s most disastrous accidents of recent times. About 300 out of 476 passengers, mostly high school teenagers who were on a school field trip, were drowned through a combination of the ferry owner’s greed, the irresponsibility of the crew members, and the incompetence of the government and the coast guards who oversaw the rescue operation. One year later, in April 2015, the captain was sentenced to life imprisonment, while a Special Investigatory Committee on the SEWOL Ferry Disaster was established under the terms of a Special Probe Law enacted in November 2014. The ferry was finally raised from the water three years after the sinking, and investigations are still ongoing at the time of writing.

¹² A city in Gyungsangnam-do, far southeastern province, where extra high voltage power transmission towers are planned but delayed due to strong opposition from the villagers living on the intended site since the mid-2000s. Disagreement between the villagers and the Korea Electric Power Corporation on the need for the tower construction and possible damage by the construction and maintenance of a new nuclear power plant nearby (which the power towers were meant to support) raised questions touching on matters ranging from development to democracy.

¹³ Malja, who was living alone after long years of family conflict over the survivor’s pension right, appeared to long for attention and recognition, particularly from the community workers, via the group activities and her year-long role as representative.

¹⁴ The other NGO B had no such women-only policy; there was one male member who had recently joined the group at the time of interview. This new male member became one of the active executive members the very next year, partly due to his relatively young age but also due to his gender (in line with the explanation given by Oh previously).

¹⁵ Due to the practical difficulties involved in recruiting 100% of its members from the low-income elderly, -the current rule regarding membership set by the HAK is that at least 70% of members should come from the low-income elderly.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by a research fund from the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.