In South Korea, AI phone calls check up on lonely seniors in a country ageing faster than Japan

Yang Sun-im, a 76-year-old mother of four, isn’t used to company.She has spent most of the past four decades alone, having divorced her husband when she was 33. The four children she raised on her own have all grown up, made new lives far away and largely forgotten her.“My daughter who lives with her family in Japan visits me once every year or two,” she says. “She’s the only person who calls me on the phone from time to time.”Even in the senior citizens’ home in the southern port city of Busan…