SEOUL – Every day, 71-year-old Park Gyung-sun delivers flowers, documents and other packages around Seoul – a job popular among senior citizens, who are entitled to ride the city’s subways for free. The work, dubbed “silver delivery” in South Korea, earns Mr Park, a former market stall owner, up to 700,000 won (about $730) a month. The company he works...
Free rides have been a perk enjoyed nationally by those 65 and older for four decades.SEOUL – Every day, 71-year-old Park Gyung-sun delivers flowers, documents and other packages around Seoul – a job popular among senior citizens, who are entitled to ride the city’s subways for free.
Free rides have been a perk enjoyed nationally by those 65 and older for four decades and are credited with keeping senior citizens active. In addition, it has left President Yoon Suk-yeol in a quandary. He promised fiscal consolidation upon taking office last May but also counts elderly voters as a key support base.
To cope, Seoul unveiled plans last December to raise subway fares for the first time since 2015, by as much as 30 per cent, although free rides for the elderly will remain in place. “In the case of Seoul, they are in fact in a far more solid financial position than the country, and given that situation, I think it is a bit too much to ask the state to take responsibility for this,” Vice-Finance Minister Bang Ki-sun told Reuters.
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