You wouldn’t believe the three exact sentences that came up in each class.
1. If I were a bird I would fly high in the sky
2. If your mother is angry, you should kill yourself
3. If we have a test, we should kill ourselves
Now. I recall that in my younger days a teacher tried talking to me because whenever I’d get a bad grade I’d say “my parents are going to kill me” But I didn’t mean it.
However suicide, especially in Korea (actually both North and South), is a growing problem – particularly among kids.
Last year, there was an average of 38 suicides A DAY in Korea. Suicide rates here are twice as high as that in Canada and the USA.
So who kill themselves?
Housewives of course. Some of them have degrees in architecture, neuro-psychology and so on. Yet they gave up a promising career to stay home with the kids, clean after their husband and watch crappy soapies in the afternoon. Some enjoy it very much but others don’t.
Moreover, when children leave the house to go to college, housewives wonder a lot about the meaning of life.
Men also tend to commit suicide.
Like you probably all know, there were dramatic social changes in Korea’s economy both thanks to a rapid industrialization and the shift from an industrially based economy to a service based economy.
This led to more competitiveness and more stress at work. It’s not like you can sit on your butt and sell all the natural resources your country possesses; you must constantly work, come up with new ideas. It’s all about productivity. It’s never enough.
Social hierarchy here is also quite powerful and another cause of stress. And while Koreans are not necessarily shallow, they do focus a lot on appearances.
As a result, families want to buy everything that’s “in”. They want their kids to have whatever they need to fit in at school (ipods, game boys, etc.) Moreover, they work so hard during the week that they want to treat themselves with material goods. So they basically ruin themselves and must face financial stress too.
As for kids, oh boy! Last week one of my students wrote a really sad story in his diary. It was about a young boy feeling totally depressed, wanting to kill himself. At the end, the student wrote “because his parents always tell him “study, study study”… PS: teacher this is really true in Korea and children are very sad”
You probably recall my post about corporal punishment too. Those kids are under a lot of pressure! They go to school during the day, then the academies at night (math, science, English, even Korean)
They have school on Saturday, sometimes they go to the academy on Sunday. In many cases parents harass them to study. And they hit them when they do badly in school… “for their own good”, with the “love stick” or the danzo.
There is currently a big trend in Japan (another country facing high pressure to economically over perform) which is called “group suicide”.
People basically meet on an internet website, discuss their problems, depress together, and instead of helping each other, they arrange to meet and commit group suicide. This trend is getting more popular now in Korea too.
Kids feel lonely. And even when they see that other people go through the same crisis, they don’t see any concrete solution to the problem. They don’t believe in change. So when they’re really tired and sick of it, what can they do?
Remember Emile Durkheim? He thought there was a close relationship between modernization and suicide. He called this “anomie”.
Basically the existing social order breaks down when there’s rapid change (due to anything but particularly industrialization and modernization) and this leads to disintegration and a “lack of comfort”. A collective sadness emerges and suicide rates increase.
Another explanation might simply lie in altruistic suicide – killing yourself to save honour and stuff. Koreans used to be a lot into that, but not so much today.
However, Korea is still a very conservative society and some things are still not quite accepted – mainly homosexuality, the empowerment of women (still very patriarchal) and choosing a profession your family does not agree with.
Rapid social change definitely has an impact on people. Remember Russia in the early 1990s; after the collapse of the USSR, the government tried to bring about western-style capitalism but it failed and rates of suicide, alcoholism poverty, domestic violence and death in general dramatically increased.
But in the case of Korea, while economy plays a large role and has an indirect impact on children (“study study study” because you must perform and it’s all about competition), it seems like children are just really sick of it all.
Ironically, my housewives class told me that they had similar (if not stronger) social pressure when they were younger. In fact, classrooms were huge and they had to be smart enough to realize that it’s their responsibility to work hard.
Nowadays they said, it appears that children are more fragile and lazy.
Some people believe that corporal punishment is not harsh enough. Basically we should beat the crap out of children in order to discipline them and ensure a successful future.
The disturbing thing is that indeed, there are less drug abuse problems here and children are more respectful to the elderly. But the downside is that suicide rates are extremely high, alcoholism is a hot social issue, and correct me if I’m wrong, but overall happiness is a tad lower.
Look at them. I really love my students and can't stand the thought of people hurting them, or them hurting themselves. Yeah of course they're a handful (and sometimes they really drive me crazy), but... they're kids!
