Tragic Incidents of Family Hardship Continue... "Collaboration Between Agencies and Community Support Needed"

Tragedy Strikes Incheon Family Following Sinchon Mother and Daughter
Struggled with Financial Hardship but Local Authorities Failed to Discover
Hard to Solve by Merely Identifying Welfare Blind Spots
"Continuous Community Attention Needed"

Following the case of a mother and daughter found dead due to financial hardship in Sinchon, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, another incident presumed to be an extreme choice for economic reasons occurred in Incheon. There are concerns that current measures to identify blind spots in welfare are insufficient to protect such cases.
Photo by Byungdon Yoo tamond@

[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Gyumin] Following the case of a mother and daughter found dead due to financial hardship in Sinchon, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, a similar incident presumed to be an extreme choice due to economic reasons occurred in Incheon. There are concerns that current welfare blind spot detection measures alone are insufficient to protect such cases.

According to the Incheon Western Police Station on the 27th, on the morning of the 25th, a family consisting of parents in their 40s and teenage siblings were found collapsed in a multi-family house in Seo-gu, Incheon. At the time of discovery, the siblings were deceased, and the parents were unconscious and taken to the hospital but are currently reported to be in a brain-dead state. A suicide note and sleeping pills were also found. Both parents were unemployed and reportedly suffered financial difficulties due to debts.

On the 23rd, in Changcheon-dong, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, a mother in her 60s and her daughter in her 30s, presumed to be struggling with financial hardship, were found dead. The mother and daughter had unpaid health insurance premiums amounting to 960,000 won for 1 year and 2 months, unpaid communication bills for 6 months, and had delayed financial debt repayments for 7 months. They were also unable to pay monthly rent for 10 months, resulting in the entire deposit being deducted.

Both families were not eligible for basic livelihood security or other support programs but experienced financial hardship. However, the Sinchon mother and daughter were classified as a ‘crisis household’ due to health insurance premium arrears, whereas the Incheon family was not even selected as such.

The policy designed to assist such families is the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s ‘Welfare Blind Spot Detection’ measure. On the 24th, the Ministry announced improvement measures. The types of information used to identify crisis households were increased from 34 to 44. Specifically, additional criteria such as water and electricity cutoffs, illnesses, and debts were included. Furthermore, the moving-in notification form will be revised to allow contact information not only of the head of the household but also of other household members.

However, there are criticisms that the improvement measures alone have limitations in preventing cases like these. In the case of the Sinchon mother and daughter, since they did not file a moving-in notification, it would be difficult to contact them even if the form is revised. Additionally, they had overdue communication bills, making mobile phone calls impossible, so even if contact information were obtained, reaching them would have been difficult.

Moreover, even when crisis households are identified, the number of families actually receiving support is low. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, among 523,900 welfare blind spot detection candidates selected in the first half of this year (January to July), only 2.9% actually received support.

Experts suggest that continuous community interest is fundamentally necessary. Professor Noh Hyeryeon of the Department of Social Welfare at Soongsil University stated, “These cases cannot be resolved simply by selecting (crisis households) on paper. Each institution must collaborate and take responsibility for a region, and beyond reciprocal support, the community must provide ongoing attention and create an environment where people can become self-reliant.”