[Namsan Ddalggakbari] The Country Has Progressed, So Why Am I Still Stuck?

Last Year's National Poverty Rate 17.5%, 5th Among OECD Countries
Economic Performance Inequality Distribution, Expansion of Relative Poverty

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Jong-hwa] "Say 'You are wrong,' like the Harvard students who collectively walked out, throwing punches at Professor Gregory Mankiw, author of the globally best-selling 'Economics' textbook, who vehemently opposed wealth tax increases and minimum wage hikes."

The author argues that solving poverty begins with 'directly facing' and 'confronting' a world where hellish job wars, Hell Joseon, gold spoons and dirt spoons, and the inheritance of poverty are accepted as common sense.

To not deny or avoid the reality but to face and confront it means recognizing the absurd reality with our own eyes and no longer being deceived by the false logic of those who try to rationalize it. And if you have said "You are wrong" without being intimidated by their authority and fame, you have already acted to solve poverty.

Now diagnosing structural problems rather than economic scale, the range of poverty is widening and becoming a social issue

The country is wealthy, but the people are poor = As of 2019, South Korea's poverty rate (population below 50% of median income) was 17.4%, ranking fourth highest among OECD member countries. Only four countries have higher poverty rates than South Korea: the United States (17.8%), Romania (17.9%), Costa Rica (19.9%), and South Africa (26.6%). Iceland (5.4%), the Czech Republic (5.6%), Denmark (5.8%), and Finland (6.3%) have poverty rates about one-third that of South Korea.

The problem lies in the fact that South Korea as a country is becoming wealthier, but the poverty rate is increasing. In other words, the country is rich, but the number of poor citizens is growing.

Until the mid-1990s, South Korea's poverty rate had fallen to around 8%. However, after the financial crisis, it surged to 12.2% in 1999. Common sense might suggest that the poverty rate would decrease once the crisis was resolved, but the opposite happened. In 2009, the poverty rate reached 15.4% and has continued to rise since.

Not a problem of 'economic scale' but of 'economic structure' = The author states that relative poverty has increased due to unequal distribution of economic achievements. He judges that the expansion of poverty is not a problem of 'economic scale' but of 'economic structure.' Therefore, "poverty should be understood not as a fixed and static phenomenon limited to recipients of government livelihood support, but as a dynamic phenomenon driven by forces that continuously push vulnerable groups in the labor market into poverty."

He also sharply criticized, "Our society still shows no signs of improvement in either the scale of poverty or the inequality structure that produces poverty." Now, poverty is not just an issue for the low-income households comprising 15% of the population, but a problem affecting all ordinary people who are within the reach of forces pulling them down from an average life.

The World Bank's (WB) poverty line is $1.9 per day. Living on less than $1.9 a day is considered 'poverty.' Converted at recent exchange rates, this is about 2,200 KRW per day or 66,000 KRW per month. By this standard, there is absolutely no poor person in South Korea.

Need for social security reform and introduction of unemployment assistance system, greater empathy for poverty to alleviate it

Poverty standard = typical living standards of Korean people It is foolish to discuss poverty in South Korea today by applying the World Bank's poverty line of 66,000 KRW per month. The World Bank's poverty line is a standard applicable only to underdeveloped countries aiming to free people from starvation and death due to hunger.

In 2019, the average monthly income (disposable income basis) of a four-person urban household in South Korea was about 4.69 million KRW. Therefore, if a household of four has a monthly income less than half of that, below 2.34 million KRW, it is easy to imagine how difficult their life must be. When assessing poverty among Koreans, one must base it on the typical living standards of Koreans, not on the living conditions of people in distant or different countries.

The language of those who lightly say that thousands are being laid off in the U.S. at this very moment, that U.S. college tuition is more expensive, and that 28 million Americans lack health insurance, to a head of household who lost their job yesterday and faces an uncertain tomorrow, a housewife holding a tuition bill of 5 million KRW that seems unattainable, or a person suffering from a disease not covered by health insurance, is violence.

Your careless words are 'violence' to those struggling right now = We must first judge whether we are people who look down from above and exercise polite violence on the common people who say, "It hurts too much to live in this era." The author emphasized, "For poverty to be alleviated, the proportion of citizens who can empathize with the difficult circumstances of the poor must increase."

The author believes that to alleviate poverty in South Korea, fundamental reforms of the existing social security system, strengthening of social insurance, introduction of unemployment assistance, enhancement of care services for vulnerable groups, and expansion of public rental housing supply are necessary. Whether it is reform of the social security system or strengthening care services for vulnerable groups, for these to be adopted as policies, there must be majority consent overwhelming opposing opinions, so more people must empathize with the hardships of the poor.

Since President Johnson declared the 'War on Poverty' in 1964, trillions of dollars have been spent over nearly 60 years, yet still 17% of the entire U.S. population, about 56 million people, live below the poverty line. In American society, which has been fighting poverty for 60 years, scholars like Charles Murray, who argue that government welfare programs only increase dependency among the poor and thus welfare policies should be abolished, have gained fame.

Is this American situation not our own? The author warned, "I think the road to a welfare state will be rough," and "What may be obstructing our path to a welfare state is perhaps the selfish desires within each of us, shaped by a winner-takes-all value system."

Poverty is coming: Era of abundance, poverty zones, Shin Myung-ho, 15,000 KRW, Gaemagowon

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.