A look at the overturned bus on Jeju, from today's Dong-A Ilbo.
As we learned yesterday, two students from Suncheon's Hyocheon High School were killed in a bus accident while on a field trip to Jeju. They were killed when the driver failed to turn quick enough, and police, according to a Joongang Ilbo article, "suspect that it was a result of the driver taking the curve too quickly." The accident happened a day before Parent's Day, an unhappy coincidence.
And anybody who has been paying attention for the past year knows that this latest accident comes roughly a year after five students from Maesan Middle School were killed in a bus accident on Jirisan on May 25, 2007. That time, the bus driver was trying to pass other buses in his caravan of four up the hill, and evidentally lost control coming down the other side. There is suspicion that a brake malfunction caused the accident, although obviously unsafe speeds would contribute to that. Jirisan is the highest mountain on peninsular South Korea---second-highest in the country, behind Jeju's Hallasan---and is, as you'd expect, particularly treacherous. From a Joongang Ilbo article at the time:
The accident site, 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from Seongsamjae, South Jeolla, a rest stop for motorists on the mountain, is at a 70-degree grade and is known as a dangerous area for driving.
As I wrote in my previous entry, if I were a parent I'd be very apprehensive about letting my children participate in field trips, especially if they were headed for Jirisan, Jeju, or other mountainous areas. No way I'd let my kid get on a bus that's travelling up or down one of the highest peaks in the country.
Flipping through the internet's papers this morning I came across an article from last May, in what appears to be the last English-language media mention of the Jirisan bus accident. The Joongang Ilbo article concludes:
The bereaved families, gathering at the funerals at Suncheon Medical Center, also urged relevant authorities to take measures to prevent such a tragic accident from happening again.
That article is from May 28th, and I haven't come across any English-language updates since. I'm curious if anyone with Korean-language skills could tell me what has transpired since. Naver will turn up videos and pictures of the accident and its aftermath, and here are a few photos, tough to look at, from a memorial service, from 데일리안:
Both Korean- and English-language sources are juxtaposing these two accidents, as they happened a year apart and happened to the same town. I've also noticed a few other interesting juxtapositions that I find striking given recent events. As you've read, there is a lot of scare-mongering going on in the media and in the public consciousness about the risks associated with American beef. The media has been using the fear of Mad Cow Disease---one program said 94% of Koreans are genetically more likely to contract it than Americans or British---as a tool to protest the impending import of American beef, a component of the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement. There have been candlelight vigils in Seoul, and even students have been encouraged to get involved. Gusts of Popular Feeling did a little write-up about that, as did Korea Beat. An excerpt from their translation of a Joongang Ilbo article, reminding us that young people are stupid:
13-year old middle school student Go, who came to the vigil after finishing an exam at school, said, “on the fan site for Dongbangshingi I saw a message saying let’s gather in Yeouido. I’m here because of Dongbangshingi.”
Many came because of what they read on the internet. 21-year old Myongji University student Kim Seon-ah said, “I received a message that said let’s stop mad cow disease, there is a candlelight vigil. So I came.”
Students’ distrust of repeated government messages that the beef is safe remains high. 17-year old high school student Jo pointed out, “we don’t believe everything that gets written on the internet. But if there is a danger then stopping this from the beginning is the right thing to do.” Lee Jae-myeong, a 19-year old freshman at Gyeonggi University, retorted, “there is a lot of wrong information on the internet, like saying that mad cow disease can spread through the air, so I don’t understand, but the government hasn’t released any detailed information so I don’t think a hasty agreement is ok.”
And, one more from the Joongang Ilbo, via The Marmot's Hole:
Getting up on stage, the student said, “Has the United States taken everything from us? It seems North Korea’s Kim Jong-il is greater. Wouldn’t it be better to stand up to the United States like North Korea?” He also said, “‘Doing it our own way.’ Doesn’t that sound nice?”
These bullshit media reports have been addressed and pretty-well debunked by bloggers and even some of the English-language papers (here and here). Also interesting is that these vigils have been compared, by papers and by bloggers, to those that sprang up in 2002, after two students were accidentally killed by American military vehicles. The Chosun Ilbo wrote, for example, on the interest in food safety that has materialized out of thin air recently:
A government official said the situation is baffling because the movement is beginning to take on an anti-American hue, just like the 2002 death of two schoolgirls under the wheels of a U.S. armored vehicle led to an anti-American wave swept the entire country.
The Korea Times had pretty much the same thing a day later:
Thousands of protesters launched a candlelight vigil in downtown Seoul Friday evening to call on the government to revoke the beef deal. The protest is reminiscent of a candlelight vigil to mourn two Korean middle school girls killed in an accident by a U.S. armored vehicle in 2002. There are concerns that the beef issue might see a return of the anti-American sentiment as seen in the death case.
Thing is, the same sort of panic didn't accompany the discovery of bird flu on the peninsula. My students and coworkers, following that inflammatory "expose" last week, all told me they were afraid of dying from Mad Cow Disease and even some students said they weren't safe living down here. I'm not sure what that meant, but I think there is a greater risk of contracting bird flu than Mad Cow Disease . . . hell, bird flu was found only a few towns over. Seems food safety is only a worthwhile issue when it can be used as a weapon of xenophobia.
Same goes with traffic safety and the deaths of those two school girls in 2002. Everyone knows Koreans are shitty drivers, and I don't even have to give you a link for that. Few use seatbelts, few look where they're going, and few seem to acknowledge the pedestrians sharing the road. Well, if you need links
Jeong Yoo-mi used to hold her infant son in her arms in the back seat on family trips. Now that he is 3, Ms. Jeong, 33, a middle school teacher in Seoul, buckles him up next to her in the back.
“I heard it is good to use a car seat and actually I do have one, but I don’t use it because he behaves well in the car. My friends also don’t use one because it is difficult to set up and the car seat takes a lot of space,” she said.
and
“We don’t have to do what foreigners do in their countries. We have our own way to take care of babies,” another posting at the agency’s Web site said.
The article mentions that 12% of Koreans use car seats for their children, compared to 90% of Swedes. Yet for years Koreans were up in arms after two middle school girls were struck and killed by an American military vehicle in 2002. I would make light of this hypocrisy a little more were the protests not so extensive, so violent, so ugly, and so recent. Certainly a nasty reminder of what our neighbors are capable of when they put their mind to hate-mongering.
The issue of traffic safety leads to another juxtaposition, this one accidental and done by the Metropolitician. A few days ago he posted an entry he originally wrote back in December, 2006, on the topic of seatbelts, child safety, and that 2002 incident. Much of the entry is quotable, but here's an excerpt:
What makes this ironic and unfortunate for the Korean peninsula is the fact that children are getting run over daily here, and nothing is being done to change the circumstances that lead to the high number of children being killed here. That road remains as is, unchanged, for all the many who yelled Miseon and Hyosun's names and were apparently shocked at their deaths.
What is sickening to me – an American, yes, but a man who started out his experience in the Korean countryside teaching in a middle school for two years – is that the nation wasn't protesting or even apparently angry (aside from people from the local community near where the two girls died) when the two girls actually died; it was only when the politicized trial and its outcome was an apparent insult to the nation that it became an issue.
Given the complete disinterest we've seen among Koreans toward both food safety and traffic safety, unless they conveniently play into an anti-American agenda, it's not too crass to say that my students ought to be more frightened of dying on field trips than of dying from American beef. The last line of the Joongang Ilbo article on the Jirisan bus accident is painful to read a year later:
The bereaved families . . . also urged relevant authorities to take measures to prevent such a tragic accident from happening again.
I'm genuinely ignorant of what happened in the eleven months between then and now. Did they determine a cause? Was the driver found guilty of anything? Did the parents receive any compensation? Were there any protests or any demonstrations held? I have no idea and would like to know. I do know that students should get their heads out of their asses and get the hell away from these anti-beef vigils, and that these puppetmaster teachers need to get their hands out of their students asses and pull them the hell away from these anti-beef vigils. And that's not me writing as a hypersensitive American who hates to see his country dragged through the mud by an ally. There is no need to imagine a threat from overseas when students are dying right here right now from institutionalized ignorance. In the past 12 months, seven teenagers from Suncheon have died on field trips. Zero have died from Mad Cow Disease. Can people please stop lighting candles in the name of public safety when there is such blatant disregard for it in so many other areas? Can parents and teacherse stop herding students to anti-American rallies when these young people really ought to be holding vigils for their friends and peers dying now?
(ROK Drop wrote a good post on Mad Cow Disease today, but I didn't have occassion to link to it. The Metropolitician had a good one earlier this week, too.)
* Update 1: Got an article on this topic in the Korea Times today.
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8 comments:
You wrote, "I do know that students should get their heads out of their asses and get the hell away from these anti-beef vigils, and that these puppetmaster teachers need to get their hands out of their students asses and pull them the hell away from these anti-beef vigils....There is no need to imagine a threat from overseas when students are dying right here right now from institutionalized ignorance."
--United States - The death toll on our highways makes driving the number one cause of death and injury for young people ages 5 to 27. Highway crashes cause 94 percent of all transportation fatalities and 99 percent of all transportation injuries, yet traffic safety programs receive only one percent of the funding of the U.S. DOT budget.--
http://www.safecarguide.com/exp/statistics/statistics.htm
Yours was not a fair and balanced blog.
I know that despite America having other domestic problems to deal with that Korea does not, such as drugs, homicide, and large scale obesity, they still do not seem to be putting forth much effort to reduce their traffic fatalities. I suppose Americans might be getting upset about this and protesting it and everything--I don’t know. However, it seems to me that many Americans are more concerned about terrorist attacks than the many other ways they are over 80,000 times more likely to die. I suppose I could write a blog about how Americans need to get ‘their heads out of their asses’ and begin dealing with their other problems rather than protesting funerals of homosexuals who were beaten to death or participating in protests that are substantially more ‘xenophobic’ against Mexicans. The difference, by the way, with the latter example is that the anti-immigration protests in the USA are not saying, ‘We disapprove of employers hiring foreign workers,’ but are more along the lines of, ‘Let’s bury mines on our southern border and start shooting desperate unemployed migrant workers.’ I could write a blog about this and claim I was not ‘hypersensitive;’ however, that would be an obvious lie if I were to write such a misleading blog to begin with.
You said, ‘And that's not me writing as a hypersensitive American who hates to see his country dragged through the mud by an ally.’
Yes, you are.
czarny, this blog isn't about America, and if it were, I'm sure Brian would talk about all the issues you brought up. . . but as it is, the blog is "Brian in Jeollanam-do" not "Brian in Virginia" so why would he blog about America's traffic fatalities?
Criticizing another country doesn't change any of the points Brian made about THIS country (Korea), and certainly hasn't answered his arguments.
you said,
"I suppose I could write a blog about how Americans need to get ‘their heads out of their asses’ and begin dealing with their other problems. . ."
I suppose you could. And if you titled it "Czarny in Texas," it would be topical and relevant to your blog. . . but if you titled your blog, "Czarny in Jeollanam-do" then such a discussion would be kind of off topic.
Those are all valid points, czarny. You could also add school shootings up there. I'm throughly appalled (sp?) and, frankly, embarrassed by a lot of my country's social ills. There are a lot of reasons why I'm not looking forward to eventually making my home Stateside.
However, yeah, I'm talking about Korea here. You're right to point out that the US has problems of its own, but they're not particularly relevant here. People truly ought to be taking to the streets back home over what's permitted to go on in my country . . . if they did, I'd fully support them.
But what goes on in the US isn't related to the bit of hypocrisy I'm talking about here.
Speaking of relevance…
When I read the article I was under the impression you meant to make a commentary about Korea. It would be fine if you did want to talk about Korea, and it would be fine if you did have complaints. I am not a person who thinks that Americans should not criticize other countries. They have that right as much as Koreans have the right to complain about America. However, your article was supposed to be about Korean traffic and public safety--at least that was the impression I had. You concluded it by mentioning how Koreans should not worry about mad cow and American beef. Trying hard to find a connection between these two topics, and based on the fact that you said, “They need to get their heads out of their asses” or whatever, I assumed that you somehow were making an association between the lack of safety with transportation and Korean delusional ideas about the danger of American beef, and some propaganda that may be associated with that. If you were in fact suggesting that, you are a propagandaist as much as the Koreans who are using mad cow to spite America. Let’s try an example reversed and see what you think.
Imagine a Mexican student living in America wants to complain about teenage suicide in America. He writes a seemingly lucid blog stating his opinion about a social problem contributing to teenage suicide in America. Near the end of the article he says something like, ‘Americans need to get their heads out of their asses, and stop going to anti-immigration protests to spread anti-Mexican propaganda and spend their time making more after-school programs.’ Then he goes on to complain about how ridiculous American neo-Nazis are. Within that random jump of issues he makes sure to include ‘Everyone knows Americans are shitty parents, and I don't even have to give you a link for that…I would make light of this hypocrisy a little more were the protests not so extensive, so violent, so ugly, and so recent... it's not too crass to say that my students ought to be more frightened of dying of suicide than of dying from not being able to afford food because of unemployment.’ Personally, I would read this as either a poorly thought-out article, or an upset, hypersensitive Mexican who tries to complain about Americans every chance he gets.
YES Koreans have hazardous roads. Possibly they’re less concerned because they have a smaller percentage of drivers, so even if they have a higher percentage of accidents, I imagine that it affects a smaller percentage of Koreans than does the smaller percentage of accidents to the higher percentage of drivers in America. I don’t want to look up the percentage of citizens injured in America versus Korea via car accidents. I will assume Korea has an issue there.
Nonetheless, was your article about the hazards of Korean transportation, or some rallies taking place in Seoul and Pusan with a few protest-happy college students? If you honestly think that a few Koreans relaxing about AMERICAN BEEF will somehow aid the safety of transportation once ‘they get their heads out of their asses,’ you are delusional at best. Otherwise I think it was fair--mild-tempered, in fact--of me to suggest that making such an association is you being ‘hypersensitive.’
Eh, I know trying to make a connection between the beef protests and the bus accidents was a stretch, but I thought the two issues were a little related. Maybe the line about "head out of their asses" was out of place, but then again I was just writing my opinion, and not an encyclopedia entry or some objective article.
My point was, basically, that students were getting worked up over an imagined threat. Yes, Mad Cow Disease is fatal to humans, but I think you'd agree that the media reports are greatly, greatly exaggerating that threat. MOreover government officials, teachers' unions, parents, and other sources are spreading misinformation, to the point that students are petrified of dying from exposure to American beef. We see them attending these rallies in force, and I don't think that's a good idea. Again, not because I'm a hypersensitive American, but because I hate seeing people get swept up in such ignorance. Such gross ignorance.
On the other hand, I brought up the issue of the two bus accidents in Suncheon and the dangerous conditions of roads. Is these directly related to beef? No, of course not. But you've got tons of students, educators, and politicians worked up over beef, while ignoring something far more deadly. Are there other problems in Korea besides traffic safety? Of course. Does every country have problems of its own? Of course. But I picked up on traffic safety for two main reasons:
1) It's timely, given the accident that killed two kids a couple of days ago.
2) Papersthemselves---and not just me---have been making the connection between the anti-beef rallies and the anti-American ones of 2002. Neither protest addressed root issues, but were instead tools used to attack a country that many believe has too much influence in Korea (military, political, and economic).
You've got students "with their heads up their asses," as I put it, protesting something based on extreme misinformation and baseless xenophobic rabblerousing. Protesting something that is waaaay less dangerous than the media is making it out. (There are economic arguments why the FTA sucks, and those are valid, but we're not talking about that here.) Meanwhile, you had an accident that killed five students at a school last year, with parents asking authorities to take steps to prevent such a tragedy from happening again. Yet, the same thing happened roughly a year later to the same town, and people are spending more time and effort protesting a phantom menace than an authentic deadly threat.
From Gwangju News December 2007 issue:
according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s 2007 International Road, Traffic and Accident Database, 6.0 per 100,000 Korean pedestrians died in traffic accidents in 2004, and 5.8 pedestrians per 100,000 in 2005. Thus, placing Korea in first place among the countries that are members of the OECD for two years running (the average for countries was 1.58 per 100,000). With the number of deaths in traffic accidents, Korea fared slightly better coming in second place among these countries with 3.45 people per 10,000 cars... Korea has actually come a long way in recent years. In a study released by this same group in September 2006 they state that between 1970 and 2004, the number of motor vehicles in Korea has multiplied by more than 2 000. In 1971 there were 145 000 motor vehicles in Korea and by 2004 there were 16 million! They go on to say that the number of road fatalities tripled between 1970 and 1990 and reached a peak in 1991 with more than 15 000 deaths but since 1990, the number of fatalities has decreased by 50%.
btw, just a note that the homosextual and migrant worker compairisons were probably poor choices to back up your arguement czsrny considering Korea's own record with these issues.
to gwangju,
Jack smokes, and he wastes time responding to blogs. Tom hates Jack and tells him that he should not waste time putting effort into responding to blogs, but spend more time working on his smoking addiction. Jack does not understand Tom’s reasoning. I think that Tom made a silly association between Jack’s smoking and blogging habits, however I never clearly stated my opinion about Jack, simply that Tom made a weird correlation between two seemingly different problems and it seems as though Tom is trying hard to muster reasons to hate Jack.
I believe a nice well-written blog could be written about mad cow and propaganda associated with that, or about the hazards of choosing to participate in the traffic here. However to correlate them is not fair, in fact it is propaganda I believe. Even comparing the girls who were run over by tanks because they snuck into some facility they were not supposed to be in to the traffic hazards in Korea is confused and unfair. Here is a fair example of a hypocritical or clearly anti-American reasoning…
“Mr. Kim ran over a child and was not mentioned in the paper yet Jack who is American ran over a girl and the paper mentioned it in such a way suggesting that his American citizenship somehow presented a greater danger than Mr. Kim.”
Sadly for those of us who thrive on living in Korea but like to complain about it, such a convenient example has yet to present itself.
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