Older South Koreans turn to dating apps to relieve their loneliness

JS Oh has struggled with loneliness since her divorce and early retirement as a primary school teacher in Seoul. But her isolation was relieved after the 59-year-old met a man four years her senior through Couple.net, a South Korean dating app that helps adult children find partners for their parents.

“When my daughter bought the dating app coupon for me, I was so excited to meet someone around my age. I met him twice for lunch and it went well — we talked about various things, it helped to relieve my loneliness,” said Oh, who lives alone with her two dogs.

Older South Koreans have paid a high price for the country’s dizzying economic growth and social upheaval of recent decades, with the fraying of traditional family structures exacerbated by inadequate government support.

South Korea has long endured the highest rates of elderly poverty and suicide in the developed world, according to OECD figures. But a combination of state programmes, civil society initiatives and rising public awareness — reflected in young Koreans’ determination to help their parents enjoy a new lease of life — have raised hopes of a better future for the rapidly ageing society.

“Although I live with my adult children, I often get lonely and have wanted to meet someone for a long time,” said JW Kim, a 56-year-old office worker.

Kim’s son bought her a coupon for Couple.net’s service with his first salary after landing a job at a state-run company. She has since been on dates with two men.

“The first man was a bit small and the other man had a tendency for bluffing. They were not my type but it was still fun to meet them,” said Kim. “The thought of dating someone again makes my heart flutter. You forget about loneliness, waiting for a date and feel happy, albeit for a short time.”

Lee Woong-jin, president of dating app provider Sunoo, which operates Couple.net, said: “We are receiving lots of inquiries from people in big cities like Seoul and Busan and even in the US, as families become nuclear and many elderly people live alone. We even have a 93-year-old male customer seeking a date.”

South Korea’s birth rate has fallen to just 0.84 babies per woman and last year, its population shrank for the first time. The number of South Koreans older than 65 will rise from 8.53m in 2021 to 17.22m in 2040, and could account for 43.9 per cent of the population by 2050, according to a report by Statistics Korea, a state body.

Experts said rapid urbanisation and extreme competition for school and university places and well-paid jobs meant many older South Koreans had been all but abandoned by their grown-up children who had to focus on their own children and careers.

“The shift from extended families to nuclear, single-person households is happening too fast,” said Kim Jin-soo, professor of social welfare at Yonsei University. “People don’t have time physically and psychologically to prepare for the shift, and the changes are compounded by extended lifespans and growing inequality.”

The challenges are particularly stark for poor, older South Koreans: 43.4 per cent of seniors were estimated to be living in poverty in 2018, the highest rate in the OECD.

Many are forced to retire in their 50s and receive only the monthly basic state pension of Won300,000 ($256). They are expected to meet much of their own healthcare costs.

The administration of President Moon Jae-in has raised the basic state pension from Won200,000, while presidential candidates ahead of elections next year have vowed to unleash radical policies to combat worsening inequality.

But academics and volunteers told the Financial Times that a focus on economic problems alone would fail to address the loneliness that blights the lives of the poor and the comfortably off alike.

“Many elderly people kill themselves because of financial problems, for example due to illness, as they still have to pay a large portion of medical bills themselves,” said Kim Jin-soo. “But another big reason is the sense of loneliness.”

Shin Kwang-young, professor of sociology at Chung-Ang University, said: “As the country has developed economically, the sense of family unity is getting weaker, making the elderly feel lonely and isolated and weakening their will for life. The traditional Confucian model based on filial duty has unwound in a single generation.”

Government and civil society groups have responded with a range of initiatives, including state-funded communal activities, regular phone calls to elderly people and better access to mental health services.

Access to pesticides has also been restricted, part of a strategy of raising practical barriers to suicide.

“We are seeing a steady downward trend — the suicide rate of elderly people in their 70s was 62.5 per 100,000 in 2015 but now it has decreased to 38.8,” said Song Dae-gyu of the Korea Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Kwon Dae-young runs Marcoroho, a social enterprise in rural Gyeongsang province in the south-east of the country that trains and employs elderly women to produce traditional crafts. The project had begun as a means to address their financial problems, he said, but had since switched focus to alleviating their sense of isolation.

“We found that grandmothers who had spent their lives as housewives struggled to establish social communities after their spouses passed away, and were much more susceptible to alienation and depression than older men,” said Kwon.

“We don’t just give them something to do — they are given employee status, titles, a sense of belonging, they make a profit and communicate with their customers.”

For Lee of Sunoo, the “explosive” demand for the Couple.net app illustrates both the scale of the loneliness problem, and the determination of many younger South Koreans to help fix it.

“In the past, it was usually parents who applied for dating services for their adult children,” he said. “Now the trend has reversed.”