South Korea aims to save seniors lost in digital age

SUWON – A little cheer rose for 79-year-old Hwang Sun-hee after she managed to place an online order at a training session in South Korea, which has one of the world’s starkest digital divides for seniors.

Age gaps in digital literacy are a global concern, yet the gulf has widened massively in the hyper-connected, fast-ageing country, prompting national campaigns to bridge it.

“You can’t do anything without smartphone apps or a kiosk machine... It’s too much for old folks,” Hwang said at a senior community centre in Suwon, south of Seoul, during a government-organised digital survival training session.

The so-called grey digital divide has created some challenges in the nation of about 52 million, home to world-leading smartphone and memory chipmakers.

In 2025, several baseball clubs began reserving a small number of tickets for on-site sales after reports that older fans with cash in hand had approached younger people at stadiums and pleaded with them to buy tickets from machines.

Nearly 90 per cent of taxi drivers use ride-hailing apps, yet more than 80 per cent of South Koreans over 60 still hail cabs by hand, a survey showed.

A 71-year-old retired public servant at the same training session as Hwang recalled spending more than 30 minutes trying to flag down a taxi on a busy Seoul street.

The cabs kept passing him by to pick up younger riders just metres away who were using smartphone apps to hail rides.

“I felt utterly useless,” Park, who gave only his surname, told AFP.

South Korea’s wide divide

The digital divide can also pose a real threat, leaving older people vulnerable to high-tech crimes such as online scams and limiting their access to medical services, experts say.

A 2025 state survey found that 60 per cent of South Koreans over 60 struggle to use public and commercial services because of a lack of digital skills, compared with just 6 per cent of those under 40.

“The intergenerational digital divide (in South Korea) appears wider than elsewhere,” said Kim Jeung-kun, professor of senior business at Kangnam University in Seoul.

He noted that the nation’s “intensely compressed” industrialisation happened in just a few decades, while it took centuries in many Western countries.

South Korea – which had a gross domestic product per capita below US$100 (S$127) in the wake of the 1950 to 1953 war – is now the world’s 15th-largest economy, according to the International Monetary Fund.

“Many of our elderly grew up at a time when many had no electricity, landline phones or proper schooling,” Kim said.

The nation’s older cohort is massive – South Korea is what the UN calls a “super-aged society”, with more than 20 per cent of its population over 65.

In response, South Korea’s public tech training for the elderly began in 2020, when businesses and services turned online during the Covid-19 pandemic.

A wish to be ‘born young’

Hwang, echoing others in the two-hour class, said she has made it this far by relying on her children for daily tasks she once managed herself – including enrolling in her favourite dance class at the local community centre.

“Before, I could easily do all of this just by calling or showing up in person,” she said.

Officials now provide nationwide training to the “digitally vulnerable” on how to use mobile devices, apps and artificial intelligence. Vans packed with tech devices and mock kiosks travel to community centres and regional festivals popular among the elderly.

In 2025, more than 65,000 sessions were held for about 650,000 people over 60.

Hwang gathered with 30 neighbours for a session in August, practising how to pay hospital bills at mock kiosks, patting a prancing robot dog and asking their phones: “Gemini, tell me about tomorrow’s weather.”

She has undergone similar training several times and said the lessons have helped her confidence, but noted that she was “so envious of young people who can do all this so easily”.

“I wish I had been born young in today’s world,” she said. AFP