A promotional image for Seoul government's project to arrange dining meetings between middle-aged people living alone in the city. PHOTO: SEOUL METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT/THE KOREA HERALD
SEOUL – Seoul Metropolitan Government said Monday that the city-wide support centers for single-person households have provided counseling services and other forms of help to 152,461 people between 2022 and 2024.
The support centers have been operating in 24 of the captial’s 25 districts since 2021, with the one in Jung-gu currently undergoing remodeling. They run programs for the solitary dwellers, which was surveyed to be 39.3 percent of all households in Seoul, South Korea’s most-populated city.
The programs range from cooking programs such as making kimchi and low-salt food, to providing repair classes and renting tools.
One of the recently-launched programs is designed to help citizens aged 40-67 in Seoul to find dining companions. Held from April to November of this year, it hosts small-scale meetings of 10 or less to eat out, exercise, watch movies or do volunteer work together.
Another city-wide program for the same age group is consulting how to organize one’s home.
Other programs launched on a district-level include “health challenge” by Guro-gu, which arrange 50-day diet and exercise groups for residents aged 20-59, and “alcohol lovers” of Yeongdeungpo-gu that invites 50 people on a one-off wine-making class, to be held on June 28.
The programs can be found at the Seoul Single-person Household Portal (https://1in.seoul.go.kr).
In Seoul’s latest survey of one-person households released in April, 40.6 percent of households with one person were comprised of people in their 60s, followed by 34.9 percent in their 20s and 30s. When asked what the biggest problem living alone was, the highest score was given to “balanced diet (4.79 out of 5),” followed by “dealing with medical emergencies (4.71),” “household chores (4.69),” and “social alienation and loneliness (4.43).”
Growing number of people said their solitary living was not by choice. Some 52.2 percent of the respondents said their intent was to continue living alone, down substantially from 66 percent in the previous year.
Over 3,000 people die alone, defined by the government as “death of a person who is socially isolated from one’s family and friends, and whose body is found sometime after death.” A Ministry of Health and Welfare report in October showed that 3,661 people died “lonely deaths” in 2023, which accounts for 1.04 percent of all deaths that year.
Asia News Network/The Korea Herald
