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Permalink Reply by Steven S. Bammel on January 31, 2012 at 6:16am

That's an odd statistic. It mentions that 35 experienced poverty for not making the average income. Does that mean 70% are making more than the average and aren't poor? When was poverty defined as less than the mean income? Just because one doesn't have a lot of income for a year doesn't mean they are extremely poor. The whole article seems suspect to me.

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Permalink Reply by Darren QX Bean! on January 31, 2012 at 11:39am

It seems to change definition mid-article.  First saying about 27% "failing to make minimum living cost" (set at "942,197 won(US$840) per month and a four-person household at 1,495,550 won" -- definitely quite low) but then talks about the 35% not making "above average" income (very strange definition of poverty).  

Would you really find it that surprising that 27% of Korean households were poor?  Despite an "average" income of about 3M won/month (I've heard, no cites, sorry, correct me if you have cites) Korea like most places has a concentration of wealth at the top (Chaebol families, cough, etc.) and it seems perfectly plausible that the "development" pace could have left a lot of people behind (who you can see if you wander back alleys in Seoul before they are "reclaimed" and developed). 

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Permalink Reply by Ondrej Slechta on January 31, 2012 at 7:06pm

It's just wrong translation. Relative poverty threshold in that research is defined as 중위소득의 50%, i.e. 50% of median income.

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Mike Park on February 2, 2012 at 9:56pm

Eun-Shil,

I'm not sure what you were expecting to hear. Were you surprised to see such figures? According to the an article in the Korea Times, and is speaking about aging Koreans...the story reports...

For many aging Koreans, it is simple: get on a payroll or deal with poverty.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2012/02/123_104013.html

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Permalink Reply by Eun-Shil Park on February 3, 2012 at 2:08am

Mike, thanks for the link! Indeed I do have my own thoughts about hidden poverty as mentioned in the first article. I don´t know for sure if there much difference between Korea and for instance Netherlands or UK. Last week I read an article about hidden poverty among well educated women of medium age in UK. Because of the global economic deplorable situation and minimizing governmental support you see people who were always (self)employed suddenly facing unemployment. This means really including personal bankrupcy and no employer is waiting for a 50 year old back on the jobmarket. But the figures given as above is to me still quite shocking. I don´t like the idea that Korea could be known as a country with top notch products to sell but cannot afford to nurture their own people.....       

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Permalink Reply by Carl Kwan on February 3, 2012 at 1:38am

All the more reason for the Korean government and society to encourage, nurture and develop entrepreneurs.

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