1. Choking, Kicking, and Slapping: A Brutal Assault
In mid-November last year, an incident occurred at a nursing home in Gunpo, Gyeonggi Province, where a caregiver in their 60s assaulted an elderly resident in their 80s. CCTV footage from inside the facility shows the caregiver pressing down on the elderly resident's neck, kicking their body with a knee, and even slapping their face with a slipper. The caregiver also slapped the resident's cheeks, twisted their arms backward, and shoved them onto a bed. The assault took place in a multi-person room, not a private one, meaning the caregiver committed these humiliating acts in front of others, regardless of the residents' dementia. It appears the caregiver became enraged when the resident, startled and confused by the sudden approach of a razor blade while the caregiver was attempting to shave them ahead of a scheduled family visit the next day, resisted. The caregiver did not report the assault to the nursing home. The victim passed away the following day, the day they were scheduled to meet their family. The cause of death was identified as traumatic subdural hemorrhage, a type of brain bleed where blood pools under the dura mater, the thin membrane covering the brain, due to external impact. It was the nursing home that reported the assault. After noticing the resident had been in the bathroom for an unusually long time, was vomiting, and sweating profusely, staff sent the resident to a hospital and reviewed the CCTV footage to determine if the resident had ingested something harmful or suffered a fall.

[Interview: Grandchild of the victim: I heard that because the resident had been in the bathroom for so long, staff checked on them two or three times, and one of the caregivers had to assist them out because they were sweating so heavily.]

Upon reviewing the footage, the staff discovered four minutes of assault and reported it to the police. Had the CCTV not been reviewed, this assault might have remained unknown forever.

2. A Twist After CCTV Footage Is Released
Throughout the police and prosecution investigation, the caregiver in their 60s reportedly denied the charges. The victim's family first saw the defendant during the first trial. Before the CCTV footage was made public, the caregiver adamantly denied hitting the resident. Once the video was released, the caregiver changed their story, claiming it was self-defense because the resident had hit them first, and finally argued that there was no causal link between the assault and the resident's death. The defense was that the resident did not die because of the assault. The court in the first trial rejected all of these claims.

[Interview: Grandchild of the victim: Even if they had apologized and asked for forgiveness, I would still be furious, but because they acted that way (denying the charges), I felt an unbearable sense of rage.]

The court determined that the CCTV footage served as clear evidence of the assault. While the resident did resist at times, the court ruled that the caregiver, who had a duty to protect the resident, went beyond self-defense and committed an act of venting anger. Furthermore, the court accepted the medical causal link based on the autopsy results, which showed the resident had no underlying conditions that could have led to death and that such a traumatic subdural hemorrhage could not have occurred without external trauma. However, considering the caregiver was a first-time offender and in their 60s, the court sentenced them to four years in prison, half of the eight-year sentence requested by the prosecution for death resulting from injury.

3. 600 Cases of Elder Abuse a Year: It Could Happen to Anyone
Can this incident be dismissed as a case of one ill-tempered caregiver assaulting an unlucky resident? Every year, there are consistently 500 to 600 reported cases of elder abuse at nursing facilities. If unreported cases are taken into account, the actual number could be higher. Why does this abuse continue to repeat? First, the shortage of caregivers is a problem. Current law requires one caregiver for every two residents. For example, if there are 10 residents, there should be five caregivers. One might think that five people caring for 10 residents is sufficient, but these five usually work in three shifts—day, evening, and night. This means that during each shift, only one or two people are responsible for 10 residents, creating a structure where abuse can easily go unnoticed. There are also practical challenges. To control some residents, particularly men with aggressive tendencies, nursing homes sometimes assign male caregivers. However, some caregivers have told us that incidents occur where residents are taken to blind spots not covered by CCTV to be assaulted. Therefore, experts argue that the fundamental solution is to increase the ratio of caregivers to residents so that the workload is not overwhelming and colleagues are present to intervene if a problem arises. For the elderly residents, who may have dementia now but were once active members of society who raised their own children, they never expected to be assaulted in a nursing home and leave this world in such a futile way in their final years. No matter how healthy or wealthy we are now, we do not know how or when we will grow old and end up in a nursing home. We must reflect on whether we are truly prepared for this era, where dying well is just as important as living well.

Reported by Kim Minjun | Produced by Shin Hee-sook | Video by Shin Jin-soo | Video Editing by Jang Yu-jin | Graphics by Lee Su-min | Produced by SBS Digital News