This, after my post "On the Korean Obsession with Educational Success," and of more talk of mothers having the bases of their childrens' tongues sliced open, (HT to Gusts) we have news that children are being given psychotropic drugs (HT to the Nomad) normally used to treat psychological disorders, with the sole purpose being to help their children get a leg up in school.
I don't know which is worse, to be honest – the fact that there are mothers so ignorant and desperate to make their kids get perfect grades (what I call the ultimate gesture of selfishness, not sacrifice) that they'll subject them to unnecessary surgeries or mind-altering drugs, or the fact that the Korean government even allows this quackery to go on, or that there are actually medical practitioners who should know better but perform these services anyway.
I don't know about you all, but when I have a kid, no doctors knife will touch his or her body unnecessarily, nor will they be given mind-altering drugs unless they need them in order to cope with a debilitating disorder, and only as a last resort.
Any parent who does otherwise certainly does not love her child as much as him or herself. If one wants an insurance policy in old age, perhaps they should invest in a retirement fund instead of torturing their children.
I was once asked by a college student here "whether Americans loved their children as much as Koreans" because of how much "more" Korean mothers apparently cared about their children's education. I would love to pose the same question to her, and ask if any mother who puts the precious flesh of her child under the knife unnecessarily or allows psychotropic drugs to be put into her child's bloodstream for the sake of a class ranking sees that child as anything other than a cash cow insurance policy in old age.
Yeah, I'm pissed. When it comes to the kids, man, I find it hard to keep from getting steamed up. And people say I "hate" Korea. I guess in a society in which parents would willingly exchange a pound of their child's flesh for mere social security, such moral indignance at the treatment of Korean youth could not be understood to be anything other than hate.
I hate to draw moral lines in the sand, but apparently not many other people are, so...
