[bane]

One of the reasons you find the elderly employed doing small jobs in places like Japan and South Korea is that there is very little social safety net. The system is setup to assume that the elderly will simply live at home with their adult children. They usually receive a very small pension of some sort and various other discounts on public services (subsidized mass transit for example).

However, if they don't find themselves in a situation where they can live at home with their children, there's very little alternative for them.