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Park, a 76-year-old Seoul resident, earns around 90,000 won (US$81.70) a month from collecting junk and waste paper. His only other source of income is a 75,000 won (US$68.10) basic old age pension from the government. He has six children, some of whom he no longer speaks to. Others are in no position to help their father - they even sometimes come to him seeking a place to sleep. Indeed, Park has sometimes found himself scrimping and saving to help out his youngest daughter, whose situation is even worse than his. For meals, he lives on rice with red pepper paste or fermented soybeans from his neighbors. Sometimes he cooks up instant noodles or cabbage leaves that he finds on his trash collection route. Most of his clothes and essentials are similarly salvaged. The basement room where he lives is covered in mold. But because the wife he separated from 20 years ago owns a house, Park does not qualify to apply for basic livelihood assistance benefits.

On Nov. 13, the National Human Rights Commission released the findings of a commissioned report on the human rights of people who earn below the minimum cost of living, but are ineligible for benefits. The government has determined that they do not require assistance, but the data paint a stark picture of people even more impoverished than those who do receive benefits.

The ineligible poor were found to make an average of 519,200 won (US$471.40) a month. The total is less than the 603,403 won (US$547.90) set by the government this year as the minimum cost of living for a single-person household. Benefit recipients averaged a monthly income of 546,800 won (US$496.50).

“With 63% of the ineligible poor paying monthly rent, it appears that their cost of living leaves them far below even the level of what is considered absolute poverty,” the researchers said.

36.8% of ineligible poor respondents said they had been unable to use winter heating in the previous year because of a lack of money. For recipients, the percentage was just 25.3%. Another 18.2% of ineligible respondents had moved because they could not afford their rent, compared to 12.1% of recipients. More ineligible respondents than benefit recipients had experienced having electricity or water services cut, by a 15.6% to 10.1% margin. Also, 36.8% of ineligible respondents had been unable to go to a hospital for treatment of illness or injury because of lack of money, while 25.8% had not been able to buy prescribed medication. The percentages for benefit recipients were 22.2% and 20.2%, respectively.

Extreme poverty was also found to be foreclosing the possibility of class mobility for young children from ineligible households, with 42.4% of respondents saying they could not afford child-raising expenses through high-school graduation, 78.8% saying they could not afford after-school institutes, and 42.4% saying they could not buy workbooks or textbooks. Benefit recipients were also found to be deprived of educational opportunity at similarly high rates. Children of ineligible families reported high rates of exposure to bullying and exclusion at school. A total of 21.2% of ineligible households reported that their child or children had been excluded, shunned, teased, or mocked in the preceding two years.

Non-recipients are typically disqualified from basic livelihood assistance benefits during the screening process because of the possession of assets or an individual capable of supporting them. But after debt was subtracted, the findings showed average net assets of 4.86 million won (US$4,410) for the ineligible poor, compared to 5.59 million won (US$5,080) for benefit recipients.

It is against this backdrop that 20.2% of the ineligible poor reported having suicidal ideations and other “extreme thoughts” because of economic difficulties in the past year.

Many are now calling for a new organization to specialize in relief for cases of people like P who suffer extreme poverty but have been ruled ineligible for benefits.

“The study shows that many of these ineligible people are living in inhumane conditions of absolute poverty, the likes of which most of us haven‘t seen since the 1970s or 1980s,” said Moon Jin-young, a professor of social welfare at Sogang University who led the study.

“We need a separate relief organization providing services to the ineligible poor, people who were disqualified in the basic livelihood assistance application process on arbitrary grounds, for the sake of administrative convenience,” Moon said.

By Jin Myeong-seon, staff reporter

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