Dying alone

Last week, the skeleton of a man was found in the southeastern port city of Busan about six years after he apparently committed suicide. The man, identified only as Kim, was 49 when he hung himself at a rented house in 2006. Kim, an unmarried manual laborer, had lived alone since his mother died in 2002 and reportedly had little contact with his neighbors. His remains were found by the building’s owner.

A month ago, the body of a woman in her 30s who had lived in virtual seclusion was found seven months after she apparently died of starvation. In Seoul late last year, a former volleyball player in her 60s was discovered dead 20 days after her death.

More recently, it has become common to hear news about such incidents, in many cases the elderly who die of illness or commit suicide after having lived alone for a long time. Korea has already become a land of “lonely deaths’’ amid a trend where nobody cares what happens next door.

Dying alone has much to do with the sharp increase in the number of single-person households. According to Statistics Korea, single-person households more than doubled over the past decade, reaching 4.54 million last year to account for nearly one-fourth of the nation’s households.

Senior citizens who live alone number 1.19 million, accounting for 20 percent of the country’s elderly. Furthermore, the suicide rate among senior citizens ― 79.7 out of 100,000 in 2010 ― more than doubled the national average of 33.5. Little wonder more people have lonely deaths if the number of the elderly living alone rises. Worse yet, nearly half of them live in poverty and 30 percent of them suffer from depression.

Nonetheless, the government has yet to even compile statistics regarding one of the most miserable deaths. Civic groups estimate the number of people who die while living alone at 500 to 1,000 a year but the actual figure will be much higher, given many unreported cases.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare provides about 170,000 low-income senior citizens who are living alone with a phone service to confirm their safety once a week but that’s not nearly enough.

Preventing “lonely deaths” is not easy. Japan, which faced this problem much earlier than Korea, has yet to come up with viable measures although it had hit upon a novel idea of confirming the safety of senior citizens by automatically checking whether they use tap water.

Given that many people die alone because of the collapse of communities, the government needs to tighten the social safety net and expand checks on senior citizens living alone. What is needed most is to provide more jobs for those living alone so that they can feel a sense of achievement. <The Korea Times>