ABSTRACT
A Seoul newspaper article on April 6,2001, reported that a municipal govemment ordered family members of nineteen elderly persons to repay what the government had provided for the elderly as welfare payments in Korea (JoongAng Ilbo, April 6,2001). One of the nineteen welfare recipients, a 72-year-old mother of four adult children, had received 123,000 won ($95) every month under the National Basic Livelihood Protection Act (NBLPA) because she was not able to support herself. Two of her four chil dren partially supported their mother by providing a small amount of money, although irregularly, so that they were judged to have carried out their duty to care for their mother. One daughter was herself so poor that she was exempted from the duty. However, the other daughter had not assisted her mother at all despite her monthly income of about three mil lion won ($2,300). The mother would not have been eligible to receive wel fare had the government known that she had a daughter who was able to support her. When the government found out about her daughter's income, the government ordered the daughter to repay what the govern ment had already paid to her mother as a monthly allowance.
