Community members and outside breakfast searchers dot the tables at a hawker at Bedok South Block 58 in Singapore in this November 2024 photo. Korea Times photo by Kim Ji-soo

Always an eager and "opportunistic" traveler, my eyes remain keen for a chance to make a trip to a place that would infuse friends, food and an experience of a distinctive locality. Thus late last year — before the political whirlwind of the short-lived martial law imposition on Dec. 3 swept up national energy — an opportunity to travel arrived, with the news of a friend visiting her homeland of Singapore to celebrate her mother's birthday. She invited me to come along. I packed, and dared to ask for lodging from a few among the multitude of friends living and working in the city state. Aside from the joyful anticipation of reuniting with various friends and eating exotic food and fruit, I was also hoping to catch a glimpse of several of the city-state's policy initiatives often touted by Korean policymakers.

One was the foreign helper or foreign caregiver system, similar to what Seoul has been running on a pilot basis for the past six months. A total of 100 foreign nannies from the Philippines arrived in Korea in September, and a decision is pending on whether to continue the pilot program that is expected to end Feb. 28. There is consensus to be reached on the application of the program. The findings of the past six months were that there was demand for the nannies in the cities of Seoul and Sejong. The debate mostly centers on the cost. The average monthly cost of hiring a full-time Filipino caregiver, including social insurance fees, was more than 2.3 million won ($1,583) even before the minimum hourly wage increased this year. That is deemed too high for most Korean households. There are other differences of course. Korea is obligated to apply the minimum wage system to the foreign workers. The nation's statistical agency showed that Korean households earn 5.25 million won a month on average.

Since Seoul's pilot nanny system did not entail them living with the Korean families, I looked at how the nannies lived with the families in Singapore. Whether it be the predominant public housing apartments that the Singapore government leases on a 99-year basis or condos rented mostly by expatriates working there, there was a room for the foreign nannies to reside. The foreign caregivers and the families seemed to mesh organically, perhaps due to the fact that the program has been in operation longer and the city state already has a multiethnic social fabric as well. A friend, who has hired a full-time foreign caregiver in Singapore, said that the presence of her caregiver provides security especially when her husband is away on frequent business trips. However, Korea is becoming increasingly diverse in its population makeup and more direly, its total fertility rate is hovering below about 0.8 percent. The Korean reality calls for flexibility to continue to implement and operate programs that have more or less addressed the pressing social challenges of the low birthrate and aging society.

A man cooks at a hawker center, a food court, in Bedok Block 16 in Singapore in this April 2019 file photo. Courtesy of Robert Morrison

And when speaking of Singapore, how can we not mention the hawker centers, the street food haven, ubiquitous throughout the city? There are more than 100 hawker centers in the city, so integral to the heart of the nation that it was added to the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2020. Captured in the bubble created by the popularity of K-food such as bibimbap and gimbap, the prowess of food from the Malacca Straits had eluded me for a long time.

On this visit, we did not have time to trek to the 2024 award-winning hawker centers as the Serangoon Garden Market or the Old Airport Road Food Center. I visited Bedok South Block 58, near my friend/host family's apartment building. However, what struck me just as impressively as the stalls that provide tasty "chwee kueh" or fried radish cake, was the sense and the actual physicality of a community surrounding the hawker centers mostly situated near public housing so that those living nearby including the elderly members of the family could come down for food throughout the day. What would be a South Korean equivalent of such a community? It got me thinking, as I, too, am on the road to becoming a member of a super-aged society in which 20 percent of the population are 65 or older.

The writer is a member of the editorial board.