Ministry set to find welfare loopholes
NK defector death reveals blind spot in welfare programs
The government has begun emergency monitoring of people in the lowest-income brackets who may not be protected by the social security net due to legal loopholes or ignorance of support programs.
The move follows the recent deaths of a North Korean defector mother and her young son in Seoul who had been isolated in a “blind spot” of multiple welfare programs.
The 42-year-old woman, identified only by her surname Han, and her six-year-old son were found dead by a janitor, July 31, at a state-built apartment in Bongcheon-dong in Seoul. The police suspect they died about two months earlier. They said it is highly likely the cause of death was starvation, as there was no food or drinks in their home.
According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Sunday, it had a meeting with local government officials nationwide on Friday and asked them to conduct emergency research on residents in low-income brackets to find and support people in similar situations as the family. People showing signs of abnormal life, such as failure to pay utility bills for a long period, will be subject to monitoring first.
Han, who divorced her Chinese-Korean husband earlier this year, had been receiving 100,000 won ($82.60) in monthly child support from the government and it was all she received as she did not have any income after the divorce.
The balance in her bank account, found in their home, was 3,858 won in February and dropped to zero in May.
She was eligible for central and local government support, such as subsidies for single-parent families and the extremely poor, but had not applied for any of them and the local government did not reach out.
The Seoul Housing and Communities Corp., the provider of public apartments, and the Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) are supposed to inform the local governments and the welfare ministry of people who fail to pay the monthly rent and electricity bills for more than three months, so the government can check their conditions and provide financial support if needed, according to the government’s safety net for extremely poor households.
However, although the woman failed to pay for more than 16 months, she was not reported because her apartment was not the specific type subject to the report system. Also at her apartment, the management office collected maintenance fees from residents altogether, so KEPCO had no means to know whether or not an individual household was paying their bills.
She used to receive the government’s basic living allowance when she first came to South Korea in 2009, but it was halted in 2013 when she had a part-time job and made an income. The government usually monitors such people for “one year” in case they lose a job and fall into poverty again. But Han was excluded, because she fell into poverty “many years” later after divorcing and coming back to Korea in 2018.
Han could also get the regional health office’s support for food, which is provided for child under six years old suffering malnutrition. But she was apparently unaware of this.