People walk across an intersection in Seoul on March 24, 2020. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Dec. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — More than 1 in 5 South Korean adults felt lonely last year, with lonelineless particular acute among socially isolated men.
Statistics Korea reported last week that 22.3 percent of South Korean adults over 19 years of age felt lonely last year, which was 1.8 percentage points higher than the previous year.
Sorted by gender, women (23.4 percent) felt more lonely than men (21.2 percent).
Sorted by age, those over 70 were most likely to be lonely (over 30 percent).
Another 27.4 percent of respondents said they had no one to call for help when facing financial difficulties, which was 10.5 percentage points higher than the previous year.
At 53.6 percent, more than half of the respondents weren’t involved in any social activities like alumni associations or leisure clubs, while 2.2 percent did not engage with any person including family.
The rate of increase was particularly high among those in their 20s.
Men claiming to have no social engagement had the lowest score at 5.21 out of 10 in terms of life satisfaction.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
