South Korea offers US$4-an-hour helpers for solo residents of capital

In South Korea’s capital, more than one in three people live alone, creating headaches when it comes time to visit hospital or simply move home. But Seoul has a solution: a “companion service” that dispatches helpers to assist solo residents with tasks that are hard to manage without a second pair of hands. On Sunday, the city’s government announced that the programme, which began more than four years ago as a hospital escort service, would soon be expanded to cover moving day logistics and...

By SCMP’s Asia desk