South Korea's Elderly Struggle To Get By

(CNN) report:- On a Saturday morning in South Korea's capital, Seoul, a line forms near a city underpass.

It's filled with homeless elderly people, who wait for Pastor Choi Seong-Won to set up his weekly mobile soup kitchen.

Choi has been running this service for the past 18 years, providing hot lunches to people who are part of a generation that helped rebuild the country's economy after the Korean War, but now cannot afford to feed themselves.

About half of the country's elderly live in relative poverty, says the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

"(Part of) the reason behind the growing rate of elderly poverty is the more than two years of serious economic crisis in Korea, along with the global economic downturn," Choi says. "Wealthy people will be fine no matter the situation, but people going through economic struggles say now is a really difficult time."

Many, like 70-year-old Seong Young-sook, are struggling to survive.

"I feel that my generation is being forgotten," she says. "I worked really hard and I've been so diligent. But somehow I ended up here."

She runs a small shop selling clothing and handbags in the country's capital, Seoul. She's holding onto her stock, even though she hasn't seen a customer in two years. When the customers stopped coming, she filed for bankruptcy and barely had enough money to even eat.

Her husband passed away when her son was just a baby, and when her son grew up, he moved overseas. Alone and depressed, she found herself constantly researching suicide methods.

"I tried to kill myself next to my husband's grave. Someone discovered me and I survived," she tells CNN.

She is not alone. South Korea has the highest rate of elderly suicide of the 34 developed nation OECD countries.