Abstract
<p>As societies age and cultural life moves online, the oldest are most exposed to being left behind. Recovery is usually judged by an aggregate silent about who actually returned, and a widening gap seen in one survey is rarely tested elsewhere. We ask not whether cultural participation recovered after the pandemic but for whom, reading only public attendance-by-age tables for Seoul and five other high-income settings. Across them the oldest sit lowest on both the in-person and the digital channel at once, a double marginalization that going online does not offset: from the published margins alone, nearly one in five of the oldest reach neither channel, a share that is zero for every younger band. Whether recovery widened the young-old gap is local: it widened in Seoul yet reversed, narrowing, in Korea's national survey over the same window. The oldest's disadvantage in level is general; the widening is not.</p>