Korea has become the world’s 10th-largest economy, but its population was ranked near the bottom in terms of happiness among the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations, according to the Korea Development Institute (KDI).
In a recent report, the state-run institute cited the World Happiness Report published by the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) that determined the ranking of countries, scoring various data such as GDP per capita, life expectancy, social support and social freedom from 2018 through 2020.
Korea was ranked 35th out of the 37 OECD members in the happiness report, followed only by Greece at 36th and Turkey, 37th.
Finland was the world’s happiest nation for the fourth time in a row, followed by Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland and the Netherlands.
Apart from the U.N. happiness report, other statistics cited in the KDI report showed that the Korean people are living a hard life.
The OECD statistics found that South Koreans were still working far longer hours than people in other OECD members were, as the country was ranked second after Mexico in terms of annual working hours per employee.
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As of 2019, a Korean worked 1,967 hours a year, 241 hours more than the OECD average of 1,726 hours. Mexicans worked 2,137 hours.
“I started working when I was 26,” a 38-year-old man who is working for an IT services company in Seoul, said, asking not to be named. “At the time, I thought once I started working and making money, I would be able to live a better life compared to my school days when I had to compete fiercely with my classmates to get to a better university. It has been more than 10 years since then, but my life is still hard as it feels like I have been enslaved. The longest holiday I have had over the past decade was just one week. I badly want to take a long leave of absence but I cannot because I’m the breadwinner for my family.”
Children are no exception from this social atmosphere as the UNICEF’s 2020 report on children’s well-being found that Korean children were ranked 34th out of 38 countries in terms of mental health, though their physical health and academic skills were in the upper ranks.
Korea is also facing the serious problem of a rapidly aging population.
According to the KDI, the number of elderly people in Korea increased by 4.4 percent annually from 2011 to 2020, far higher than the OECD average of 2.6 percent.
Adding to concerns was that the poverty ratio of senior citizens was 43.4 percent as of 2019, the highest among OECD countries ― the average was 14.8 percent.
“After I lost my husband in 2007, I used to work as a freelance lecturer teaching traffic safety to children. At the time, I earned about 1.5 million won ($1,331) per month, which was not sufficient, but okay to live on by myself for a month,” a 69-year-old woman living in Gyeonggi Province said on condition of anonymity.
“But I lost my job last year following the outbreak of COVID-19 and for now, I am spending my savings, and my daughter sometimes helps me out with money. I don’t know how long I can live like this. I am not sure either if I can get my job back after this pandemic comes to an end. It feels like my life has been mired in so many uncertainties, and this makes me depressed.”
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| Korea is rapidly becoming an aging society, and the poverty ratio of senior citizens was the highest among OECD countries as of 2018. Getty images bank |
Park Myung-bae, a professor of the department of gerontal health and welfare at Pai Chai University, said the government should realign the social system to prevent senior citizens from being excluded from participation.
“The government should establish more effective systems that would help people delay their retirement so older people can be financially independent for a longer period of time,” he said. “The government should also actively encourage people to join supplementary pension systems operated by private entities by giving them tax benefits, in order to prepare for future.”
Numbeo, a site that collects global cost-of-living data, has released a similar analysis showing Korea’s quality of life came in at 42nd out of 83 countries surveyed this year. The country’s ranking was lower than several developing nations such as South Africa.
The site scored the quality of life of each country after analyzing the cost of living, purchasing power, pollution, crime rates, climate and health system quality, as well as traffic commute times.
Citing that the country’s ranking was much higher at 22nd out of 67 countries in 2017 when President Moon Jae-in was inaugurated, Rep. Kim Gi-Hyeon, floor leader of the main opposition People Power Party, said, “Koreans’ quality of life has fallen rapidly while President Moon has been in office over the past four years. This is a result of soaring property prices and other living expenses.”
Numbeo showed Switzerland coming in first in terms of quality of life, followed by Denmark, the Netherlands, and Finland.
