Is it just me, or do a lot of people seem to be dying lately? Once again, this blog is forced to address a death.
I'm off to Jinchon tonight with my wife's family. My wife's first sister's husband's father is dead, and we must visit and bow to his funeral home portrait.
Although he was 88, the man's death was not a natural one. What it comes down to: my sister-in-law and her husband did not attend the father's birthday party. Therefore, the father got depressed and drank nung-yak, literally farming medicine: in other words, pesticide. He tossed off a shot glass's worth, which was enough to put him in the hospital to suffer for a week, but not enough to kill him right away. Interestingly, one of my wife's old friends also committed suicide in the exact same way. Only being much younger and stronger, he lingered in the hospital for several months before dying.
As my friend Tim contemptuously mentioned, banning the word suicide in search engines (in Korean, Ja-sal, literally self-kill, just as it is in English) is hardly a good way to address the problem. It's a bandaid on a gaping wound. Suicide is happening all the time here: for instance a boy killed himself at a school down the street after being punished by the teacher just the other day. The Korean government needs to think about serious solutions to this problem. With one of the world's lowest birth rates and highest suicide rates, the great Korean nation is gradually eroding away.
In other death-related news, a strange and shocking story from the newspaper yesterday. A man had his licence suspended for drunk driving. His suspension time almost finished, he was driving illegally and under the influence of alchohol at the same time. He hit a boy with his car, causing minor injuries. He took the boy to the hospital, but they sent him to another, bigger hospital. Instead of taking him there, he drove the boy to a mountain and killed him with an airgun used for hunting, as he was afraid to lose his license again.
I'll be more cheerful next time.
Unfortunately there are times when it is hard to be cheerful. Korea needs to start tackling the suicide problem seriously. It has been a big problem for a long time and now they are number 1.
ReplyDeleteYes Korea you are NUMBER ONE amongst OECD nations for adult AND teen suicides. (South Korea not North.) Not something to be proud of. It is time to stop ignoring the problem or dealing with it in a half assed manner, or worse a fully assed manner.
I will be hoping you have happier things to write about.