"Drink a Little Drink"

Another good article from the Joongang Daily.

Bottoms Up?
Corporate Korea distorts historic drinking culture

"To show commitment to one’s company, old traditions evolved into a peculiar drinking culture here involving boilermakers and group binge drinking."

 

Click the box below for the article 

This one is about the drinking culture in Korea, which having experienced, can be pretty absurd. You are expected to drink when offered and not deny it. If you do, you are seen as weak and it can hurt your relationships.

Personally, I've refused drinks with teachers many times as I do not enjoy getting completely drunk that I cannot stand on my own. They've come to accept this fact, but give me looks of disapproval and make comments in Korean that I don't understand, but can understand they're disappointed in me. Tough.

Yet, this doesn't effect my job in anyway unlike it could for Koreans. My girlfriend's position as an event planner entails higher risks as she is expected to drink with her co-workers as well as clients for social and business reasons. She doesn't enjoy drinking that much either and has said that she can't refuse her bosses - until one time after a business meeting I almost brought her to the hospital for alcohol poisoning because she was extremely drunk and having a hard time breathing. After I expressed my disapproval and anger at her bosses for "forcing" her to binge drink, she talked with her human resources manager and they became aware of her concerns.

According to a previous Joongang report,  Workers sick of drinking sessions after office hours, "Three out of 10 Korean workers are dependent on alcohol" and "according to a recent survey by Incruit";

"27 percent of respondents said they are dependent on alcohol, including 32 percent of men and 22 percent of women. It reflected the fact that 46 percent of respondents said they go out to drink up to three nights a week, with 77 saying they become drunk 10 percent to 20 percent of the time...Nearly 4 percent of respondents admitted to suffering from alcohol-related illnesses or having to take medication, with 7.1 percent of men and 0.6 percent of women saying this was the case."

Alcoholism and Alcohol related incidents have become some major issues for Korean society. Drinking and driving is a major issue, although almost anyone can easily take taxi's or hire proxy drivers. There have been issues of drunk men abusing women on the subways, abducting children from their homes and even schools. (As you can read here, here and here.) Of course, unfortunately these things happens everywhere in the world.

As a side note: the other night our staff went out for a school function and I witnessed a drunk woman so drunk she fell and slammed her head into the corner of a concrete wall causing her to bleed. (while her drunk colleagues laughed and threw her half-unconscious into a taxi). I was reminded about the "Blackout Korea" blog -  where you can see some interesting photos: sometimes of passed out Koreans in public....

 

...and other times of foreigners making fun of them (in a pretty immature fashion).

 

"Protection"

"Are you freakin' kidding me!?!?!"

This is what I said to myself the other day upon reading the news that another young student was brutallly raped in Korea within the past few months. I previously mentioned in the News Feed about a 13 year old who was raped and murdered. You can read the story here.

As the JoongAng Daily reported on June 10th, an 8 year old elementary school girl in Seoul was abducted off school property, brought to the assailant's home and raped. Thankfully, the girl escaped, and the assailant was arrested.

Basically, the man (Kim Su-cheol) was drunk and wandered throughout the school with a box-cutter until he found his victim. He threatened to kill her with the razor and took her off school grounds to his nearby home where he raped her and fell asleep. After he dozed off, the young girl escaped and the incident was reported to police who used security camera footage to track him down. As police closed in to arrest him, he tried to cut himself in the neck with the razor. In the end, the girl needed 6 hours of surgery and is expected to be in recovery for approximately 6 months.

Awful story right? It gets worse. The man was previously convicted of raping another girl in 1987, as well as has reportedly been paying a 18 year old (Korean age) runaway for sex. She is a middle-school drop out who lived with Kim for 2 months and is pregnant. Adding more insanity to this story - Kim also lives nearby the school. (Why is this allowed? However, it is pretty rare not to live nearby a school in Seou.l)

Kim later confessed and even re-enacted the crime for police and the event was open to the media and the public. This is a practice that I don't understand. It seems to help police though, and maybe will serve to lessen his punishment. It may be for naught however, because there are cries for the death penalty - even from Kim himself who is quoted as saying "There’s a devil of lust inside of me. I deserve death for my crime."

There are many things to comment on in this story. I don't even know where to begin. For one, I have stated before that I am shocked at the lack of school rules for the safety of the students. Schools constantly have random people selling things to teachers in their offices - from insurance and teaching equipment to yogurt drinks and pantyhose. Some of these people seem to also have mental problems.

I commented to teachers before about how I was shocked that anyone could walk into a school and nobody pays them any attention. It is shocking that teachers either ignore the strangers, or even talk with them. I have been told that schools should be open to the neighborhood because schools are "for the people".

More shocking is that religious groups such as the Jehovah's Witnesses hand out their propoganda to teachers AND students while discussing their faith and promoting church events. After school, one can find salespeople outside the school gates handing out flyers for hagwons (private academies), selling snacks, and promoting other events for students and parents. Also, teachers have told me that they find it annoying that salespeople come to school and bother them while they are busy, and have commented that sometimes they steal purses and laptops off teachers desks. 

Where are the restrictions?

I don't understand why the school districts do not have policies for disallowing strangers in the schools. Where are the procedures for parents, administrators, and teachers to follow in these regards? Most schools in the U.S. keep doors locked, have aides or teachers supervising students in the hallways and at recess. They have check-in and check-out procedures for parents and guardians to follow to access their child on school grounds and obtain entrance to school property.

Rules. Procedures. Laws. Bad things have happened in the past in American schools that cause alarm and led to the inception of such things. It's too bad that humans have to learn from terrible cases like these that we need to apply those aspects into our societies.

However, one must remember that Korean society is relatively kind, peaceful, respectful. Guns are pretty much outlawed, there is little gang violence, and illegal drug use is extremely low due to strict laws. Students are pretty safe inside schools from other studenst (except kids who do things like this) - Mainly, it's the weirdos outside the school that worry me.

What is Korea's reaction to this specific incident? Since there was such outrage, the government has decided to purchase even more CCTV security cameras nearby schools, parks, and other places where youth congregate. Great - more Big Brother watching your every move. CCTV, can be a good deterent to crime, but usually is only helpful AFTER a crime has been commited. What is needed at schools is policies in place to PREVENT these sorts of crimes. Most importantly it comes down to the school boards, administatrators and teachers. They are the first line of defense - the soliders in the trenches who are aware if something is wrong. From my experiences, it seems like the teachers in Korea are the ones that need to be educated - enough so that the children are safe and incidents like this can be prevented.