Argumentative essay

Did you ever know that senior citizens in Korea can ride the subway without paying money? A few years ago, the Korean government made a free rides system for elders. The system is about how senior citizens who are over 65 can take the subway for free. However, this system has been causing problems in Korea. So, free rides for senior citizens on the subway should be banned. Here are two reasons.

First, a huge amount of money is lost because of this system. The cumulative losses at subways due to elderly passengers riding for free over the past five years has reached 1.6 trillion won ($1.45 billion) for Seoul Metro and other subway operators across the nation. According to the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, Wednesday, the amount of fares exempted for senior citizens at seven subway operators in Seoul and other metropolitan cities reached 343 billion won in 2010, compared with 337.3 billion won in 2009. The lost revenue at Seoul Metro, the operator of the subway line Nos. 1-4, reached 139 billion won, while Seoul Metropolitan Rapid Transit, which manages the subway line Nos. 5-8, suffered an 84 billion won loss.  As those problems were occured, especially in winter and summer, when air conditioners or heaters have to be turned on, more senior citizens over 65 come to subway. They prefer to be in the subway, as  it's colder and warmer inside it. "Many homeless, old people to take a subway and spend their whole day in it" is happening a  lot in these days.

The second reason why free rides system should be banned is because there are conflicts between elders and 20~40 years old people. In Korea, usually elders get annuity each month or have formal jobs in their own. In the other hand, 20~40 years old people don't get any annuity(only few people like 1% got annuity), don't have formal jobs, usually irregular jobs and have lots of disbursement for their own family and education. '2040s' are thinking they are having great disadvantage in transportation, too. I agreed with their opinion. As Korea is becoming a welfare state, '2040s' get to pay more taxes to government. Simplifying the situation, it is unfair. '2040s' pay more money and they aren't having advantage from that.

Some might say, '2040s' will soon the get advantage because they become the senior citizens. It's true. But we should think about 'now'. If '2040s' can't stay any longer from the pressure of money and displeasure of this system, they can't live until they became 65 years old. It's a long way to become 65 years old for '2040s'. We can't even be sure if all of '2040s' would get services as the '5060s' of nowadays. One of the problem in Korea is that elders are becoming a larger population than new born babies. About 12.6 percent of subway passengers on lines operated by Seoul Metro were senior citizens, while those aged over 65 accounted for 13.5 percent of subway users on Seoul Metropolitan Rapid Transit lines. It's making Korea turn into an 'elders land' as it called. '2040s' should not  pay too much taxes  just for free senior citizens.

Elders are old people. Old people have been Korea's citizens. Korea citizens have been paying taxes and worked a lot for their country. I quite agree that this is a syatem and time for elders to have profit for their hard work. Still, not all of the elders have rights of having profits. And there are '2040s' who has been working harder and be diligent more than elders. Let's take an example of poor. Poor doesn't pay taxes. Poor became over than 65 years old and get the profit of free rides. That's the problem. Our society can not just give profits to elders just the reason of elder-respect. Not whole elders have a perfect circumstances for this system.


In conclusion, I disagree that the Korean government should let senior citizens ride the subway for free. It caused money loss that could be used in other ways. It also caused conflicts between .2040s' and '5060s'. '2040s' are as important as '5060s'. '5060s' are already getting cheaper bus rides, and giving them yet another advantage would make the problem worse.