[Report File] They were thrown into the wild… When you need 'rights', not compassion

"Violence is the attitude of giving up on understanding the other person delicately."

When asked for an interview, an old friend of mine refused, citing literary critic Shin Hyeong-cheol.

From the age of 15, the friend had to bear with his father's thick hand sword, sexual assault, and the second assault of his mother, saying, 'Still, be patient because it is family.'

I left the house with the anger that had been comforting me for 5 years, and I endured the gaze of those around me as 'a hard-working child'. 

A broadcast article that lasts less than two minutes will not be able to express his concerns in detail.

Through the inevitable omissions and vague generalizations, the person in the article will become a 'hard but hardworking child' again.

The article that gave up the half 'delicate understanding' of the self and the other half was just 'violence' that reminded the wounds of that time, and the friend refused the interview.

My response to that decisiveness was cautious and modest, because I felt it was out of the realm of persuasion.

This is a story from last February.   

I was left with a feeling of debt that I asked something I shouldn't have asked.

Instead, he said, "I want to write good articles."

"I will write delicately," he promised.

Now, 7 months have passed, I have met other cases, and thanks to them, I have been thinking about the article again.

Instead of a broadcast article that left a lot of regret, I would like to put a review of the coverage in a small space that was allowed for me to explain why I wanted to write this article. 

Forced separation from family...

Do you know 'a young man leaving home'?

There are young people who had to leave the house between their 20s and 30s.

These are young people who had to take responsibility for their livelihood on their own due to domestic violence, sexual violence, or financial difficulties.

They are called 'post-family youth'.

It is not a legally or administratively organized term.

Two years ago, a private research group arbitrarily gave the name to inform the world of their existence. 

Reum, who had been threatened with a knife by her father for years saying, 'Your brothers are deceiving me', and Heeyeon and younger brother who had to find a job away from their family to feed their younger brother instead of their parents when their father who went to prison and their depressed mother divorced. Ye-jin, who was sexually harassed by , but had to run away from her parents who blamed her, and my old friend are all young people who left the family.

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Out-of-home youth is a slightly different concept from 'out-of-school youth'.

Legally, out-of-school youths who leave their homes as teenagers between the ages of 9 and 24 can receive support such as shelters and shelters.

However, out-of-home youth also includes young people over the age of 24, who are excluded from the support they may receive as a teenager because they are adults.

It is also a different concept from a child who has ended protection (young people preparing for self-reliance).

Unlike children who have received support from a shelter and have to leave the facility after the period of protection is over, youth out of the home cannot receive support for self-reliance, etc. 

Since it is not an officially defined subject, there is no proper fact-finding investigation, let alone related organizations or laws.

It is only estimated that one conservation group numbered about 20,000.

The government explained, "Unless the children confess to themselves that they have left the house, it is difficult to determine the exact situation." 

independence in the wild

As it is an unfamiliar term, misunderstandings follow.

“Isn’t it because you left the house in an accident?”, “Aren’t they poor children?”, “Where is the young man who is not even that hard?”, “Can’t you make money on your own when you’re in your 20s?”.

Kang Mi-sun, the representative of a social enterprise that supports the youth out of the home, answers:

"'Independence' and 'Self-reliance' are different. 'Independence' is a way of living on your own after being thrown into the wild of society without any preparation and having to find a place to live and a job with the support of your parents and make sufficient preparations. 'Self-reliance', which must be found, is different." 

The first difficulties faced by out-of-home youth in the wild are cold and hunger.

Sohyeon had nowhere to live, so she went back and forth between empty houses and dusty container boxes in the planned redevelopment site.

It was difficult to find an electric blanket, let alone a boiler.

At dawn, I could not stand it, so I warmed up for a while in a nearby jjimjilbang and came back.

He hypnotized him, saying, "I'm not hungry," because he didn't have enough money to buy a line of vegetable gimbap for 2,000 won. 

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Due to the tight cost of living, the family only feels sorry for them.

Heeyeon, who has no part-time job from serving kimchi stew at home to loading and unloading parcels, earns as little as 400,000 won and as much as 600,000 won a month.

It is said that her high school brother, who takes care of her like her child, has just woken up to 'pretty clothes'. 

Loneliness and anxiety are also insurmountable walls.

Yejin, who started taking antidepressant and anxiety medications two months ago, says it is the most difficult to get into an empty room alone.

During the interview, Yejin said the most common words, "I still wanted to believe in my family."

'Household unit welfare system'...

marginalized youth

Post-family youth who struggled to become self-reliant wanted help from society.

But it wasn't easy.

This is because of the 'household unit welfare system'.

Most of the welfare system in Korea consists of 'household units'.

The basic livelihood security system is also the same.

All household members are eligible for welfare, not just one child. 

The problem starts here.

Even if they leave their home, they are tied to the original family as 'one household' on paper.

No matter how long you have been separated, it is practically impossible for a child who has left home to insulate him on paper from his parents.

As a result, their income and their parents' income are often combined and excluded from welfare recipients. 

The Ministry of Health and Welfare is also aware of this blind spot.

This is why we have prepared an exception clause so that you can apply for the Basic Livelihood Recipient separately from the original household.

We have made it possible to independently apply for Basic Livelihood Recipients when 'individual household insurance is required for other domestic violence reasons.' 

That doesn't mean that the problem is solved right away.

In order to be registered as a basic livelihood recipient according to the exception, you must go through the Basic Livelihood Security Deliberation Committee.

Applicants are judged by experts to see if they really fall under the exceptions, and it is difficult to get past this stage.

This is because the applicant has to prove himself/herself by presenting documents that he/she has been subjected to violence.

Domestic violence is very difficult to document due to the nature of it.

In the closed space of the home, children are more likely to endure and hide when they are subjected to violence.

Even if the accumulated anger erupts and asks for help outside of the home, it is difficult to keep recordings, videos, and proof documents.

Even if a few traces remain, how many victims have been systematically arranged so that they can have legal and administrative effects? 

A record of counseling at the facility or a report to the police could be evidence, but this is not applicable to victims who were afraid and did not apply for counseling or report to the police.

So many out-of-home youth give up support for the Basic Livelihood Security System because they fail to prepare documents.

Jeong Ik-joong, a professor of social welfare at Ewha Womans University, also pointed out, “For children to prove their own victims, it is no different from not helping them.” 

Post-family youth is a 'new type of household'

If I finish writing like this, I will be committing another violence, as pointed out by an old friend.

I only listed the fact that post-family youth are 'poor young people', but I couldn't convey their thoughts.

So, I would like to summarize the story that an interviewee requested to include, even though it was not included in the article. 

The existence of young people out of the home poses a big question to our society: 'Can we recognize another form of family?'

The current household-level welfare system was established during a period of rapid growth in the 70s and 80s.

This is a welfare model that was developed assuming a 'patriarchal household' where the father goes out to earn money and the mother takes care of the housework.

At the time, not many people moved away from this model of furniture and lived alone.

Therefore, the welfare system also regarded patriarchal households as normal families, and anyone who broke away was considered abnormal households.

'In principle,' one household was the basic unit of welfare, but if there was a defector, an 'exception clause' was added to provide support. 

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The problem is that, as the speed of social change is accelerating, household types that can no longer be embraced by existing household models continue to emerge.

It is not easy for young people to be recognized as single-person households for young people out of the family, since it is impossible to separate them in the family register and it is difficult to prove their situation with documents, but they definitely exist around us.

Youth out of the home is just one example.

We cannot solve the problem by inserting exceptions into the household-level welfare system every time a new family form such as the out-of-home youth continues to appear.  

If our society can recognize them as a single household, their welfare becomes a 'right' that they should enjoy as citizens, not a 'benefit' given to children who work hard.

It is true that the situation is objectively difficult, but instead of 'I have to help because I am pitiful', I am given the right that I should have as a household.

Their existence in this way can lead to the big question, 'How do we reset the basic unit of the welfare model?'

With the youth leaving the family as an opportunity, we can think about how to embrace the various types of furniture that are clearly present around us even though we have been neglecting them.

A good story of ordinary young people

"Good stories help you become less violent" 

In an interview, when asked how to avoid violence, literary critic Shin Hyeong-cheol answered:

As he advised, he tried to tell a good story in order to write less violent articles.

He wanted to listen in detail to 'what kind of person do you want to live as' beyond the simple question of 'how hard it is to live'. 

This is the reason why I remember deeply the story of aspiring actress Hee-yeon, who willingly showed off an unfamiliar monologue acting, and Ye-jin, who explained the character she drew herself, saying she dreams of becoming a game designer.

I also remember the story of wanting to be remembered as 'an ordinary young man who does his best in his own place' rather than 'a child who lives hard but is perfect'.

It is a pity that each of these unique and beautiful stories could not be included in the broadcast article. 

Perhaps the reason I wanted to write this article so much was that I wanted to express a complaint to an old friend who said he didn't want to be a pitiful person anymore, 'You only need to know my sincerity'.

So, I hope that this short slumber replaces the cautious and modest answer from 7 months ago. 

(8 news on September 12)