Today (28th) I want to talk about <the concept of family>.

They share blood, but they have a family that is inferior to their enemies, and they are not related by blood, but they are more like family.

The family who is telling their stories from now on is said to have been like that.

When they were separated from each other's husbands due to bereavement, the two friends lived as a family in the same house for 30 years.

She became a mother of two and was loved more than anyone else.

[Kim Mo: We've lived together since we were 3 years old, and my mom and I were like mom and dad, we were together whether it was Mother's Day or Children's Day, and then they were all there at my graduation ceremony, they were with me on a trip, they stayed with me in the car, and they stayed with my mom and aunt even when I just slept....]

Kim said she wanted to tell the world the name and story of her other mother, Kim Kyu-ri.

Kim Kyu-ri passed away four years ago and is now buried in an unrelated ossuary.

Kim Kyu-ri's real family had long since lost contact, and the right to take over the body and hold a funeral was impossible unless it was a legal family, so Kim Kyu-ri was treated as an unrelated deceased.

[Kim Mo : I was just notified the day before. I'm just cremated tomorrow, because I'm going to be unrelated. Now they told me it's the state. I can't even give my aunt (Kim Kyu-ri) a funeral, and I didn't have a normal family at all.]

They didn't have the right to move the ossuary, so Kim Kyu-ri's ashes were left in an unrelated ossuary.

It was another mom who had raised me for 30 years, and I felt guilty that I was being unfilial.

[Kim Mo: It broke down a lot. After that incident, I had a lot of trouble and I don't know why the law is like this, and the most common thing I heard was 'Why are you doing this when you're not a family?' What the hell is the definition of a family? I don't know if I have to remarry and make a guardian, and I don't think you know if this situation doesn't happen.]

Only recently was the law amended to allow funerals to be conducted by people with whom people were close during their lives, starting in September.

However, not only the issue of holding such funerals, but also the question of whether it is time to rethink the type of family in essence.

In fact, the number of non-kin households is on the rise.

Non-kin households are "households of five or fewer people living together with men and women who are not family members."

There were 472,600 non-relatives households last year, the highest number since the statistics were compiled.

Social perceptions are also changing drastically.

According to a survey by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family in 2021, about 62% agreed when asked if a relationship that shares livelihood and housing can become a family even if it is not related by marriage or blood.

In particular, 7 out of 10 people said that social laws and systems are not able to respond flexibly to the new tide of change in diverse families.

Under these circumstances, another bill was introduced in the National Assembly.

It's the Living Partnership Act.

The idea is that if two adults share a life and take care of it, they should be given rights and duties equivalent to marriage.

[Yong Hye-in/Basic Income Party lawmaker: An elderly family who wants to live the rest of their lives with a like-minded person who has lost a spouse, a family of friends who want to take care of each other and take care of each other, a non-married person who wants to live freely without being bound by marriage and blood ties with a loved one, and common-law marriages are all new family figures that are common in our neighbors. However, the current laws and systems in our country do not include diverse families.]

In fact, it's not the first time such a bill has been created.

In 2014, Congresswoman Jin Sun-mi first prepared the legislation, but it was relentlessly attacked by far-right and Christian groups.

At the time, Congressman Jin's official site was flooded with petitions such as "Circumvention of Homosexuality Law" and "Imagine Your Son or Daughter Dying of AIDS."

Later, in the last presidential election, then-Justice Party candidate Shim Sang-jung declared that he would create the "Citizen Partnership Act," and in February, MDP Leader Park Hong-geun said, "It is time to discuss the introduction of the Living Partnership System in earnest."

In the concept of family, what is more important than blood ties is whether you really rely on and love like family.

This is the first full-scale legislative attempt, and attention is focused on whether it can achieve national consensus.