A majority of Korean families are gripped with a range of problems, which threaten to rattle the foundation of society if left unaddressed.
Nearly six out of 10 households are in critical or vulnerable situations due to disease, debt, unemployment, delinquent children or other troubles, according to a report published this month.
Only 42 percent said they had little difficulty during the past year.
About one in four families (23 percent) cited illness of one of its members as the most serious concern, followed by financial distress (22.3 percent), unemployment (4.74 percent) and delinquent children (3.09 percent).
Domestic conflicts (1.28 percent) and alcoholism (0.61 percent) were other reasons to destabilize family life.
The number of households in trouble, which was estimated at slightly over 10 million, or about 57.8 percent of the total, would further increase by up to 190,000, taking into account such factors as divorce, suicide and accidents, which were not considered in the report by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs.
More than 114,000 couples broke up in 2011 and over 32,000 people committed suicide, were murdered or killed in accidents in 2010, according to figures from Statistics Korea.
Around 41,800 households suffered from property damage in fire accidents in 2010.
Policymakers are advised to pay heed to the implications of the report.
The concept of families in crisis has not been established in Korean society, leading to the lack of effective measures to support them.
The current system focuses on helping households categorized as vulnerable, though based solely on income and property.
It should be considered that families can be driven into critical or vulnerable situations by dysfunctional factors other than economic difficulties.
A caring program run by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family covers family members of victims of rape or school violence and those who committed suicide, but does not cover households affected by divorce, unemployment, domestic violence, alcoholism and other problems.
As the report suggested, it might be needed to establish a task force in local communities around the country, which are connected to the provincial administrations and the central government, to provide a tailored and systematic support for vulnerable families. Establishing a hotline that can be accessed with the same number from around the country could also help offer assistance promptly.
Preferably, psychological treatment and household management services would have to be provided to family members who have abruptly fallen victim to fatal accidents and natural disasters.
In the long term, programs could be worked out to help reunite separated families.
Efforts to support vulnerable families should be strengthened to enhance social cohesion, which in turn would reduce social costs from an increasing number of family break-ups.
The importance of a healthy family is illustrated in a study which showed a high correlation between rates of murder and divorce in 242 local administrative districts around the country.
The need for measures to help keep multicultural families together is also increasingly urgent. Multicultural couples, whose number has exceeded 250,000, accounted for 12.3 percent of divorces last year, despite strengthened programs to help immigrant spouses, mostly women from China and Southeast Asian nations, adapt to Korean society.
Many children in poor and broken multicultural families are being driven into the edge, raising concerns they might pose a threat to the stability of Korean society when they grow up.
Government policymakers may also need to seriously consider measures to cope with a growing number of nonstandard households such as couples in common law marriages or those in a civil partnership, so that they are not excluded from benefits in child care, medical care and housing.
This may draw negative response from conservative groups but the rapid increase in the number of families formed in nontraditional ways is pushing the country to refer to precedents in France, Germany and other Western advanced nations.
