The National Statistical Office (NSO) said Wednesday that an average of about 8.7 out of every 100,000 children aged under 15 lost their lives in 2005 in traffic accidents, drowning and other incidents. The top two were Mexico with 13.6 and the United States with 9.2. The average was 5.6.
Traffic accidents accounted for 42.7 percent of the total, followed by drowning at 20 percent. Murder and suicides took up 8.7 percent and 5.3 percent, respectively. Boys accounted for 64 percent of the total.
``The cases of child deaths have declined over the years thanks to better road safety and other social infrastructure. But many children here are still killed in car accidents and from other causes. The data also found that kids from low-income families are more likely to encounter various hazards,'' an NSO official said.
Jeollanam-do is first among administrative divisions, with 12.2 deaths per 100,000.
Other data from the OECD has shown South Korea has the highest suicide rate, its people work the most number of hours (are at work the most I should say), has the highest rate of new TB infections, has a private sector that spends the most on public education, has the largest public school class sizes, is first in elderly poverty, ranks last in health spending, leads in motor vehicle accidents, and leads in accident rates among pedestrians. South Korea, according to the OECD Factbook 2009, is the least happy, and in a category that could go both ways, has one of the lowest birthrates in the world.
On the flip side, South Korea has the lowest obesity rate among OECD nations, the highest level of household internet penetration, is expected to recover the fastest from the current economic crisis, pays its public school teachers the second-highest salaries, has given us the greatest cultural inheritance of everything in the world, and ranks among the top in some academic areas that I don't have time to look into right now. In many of the articles and posts I linked to---sometimes on my own site to give context and revisit older news---you'll find other rankings vis-a-vis the OECD member nations. For example in the article about private sector spending on public education:
Despite high education costs, Korea topped the OECD countries in population that has attained at least upper secondary education among those 25-34 age range. However, the percentage of parents who were satisfied with education quality was lower than the OECD average.
The report also found that Korea had a high ratio of students to teaching staff in higher education institutions. Korea ranked third in annual tuition for state-run universities at $3,883 following the United States' $5,027 and Japan's $3,920. In the case of private universities, the U.S. topped with $18,604. Turkey came next with $14,430 followed by Australia with $7,452 and Korea with $7,406.
However, Korean professors were paid more than the OECD average salary and their working hours were shorter than those of faculties in other countries.
All of this points to one thing: even more than foreigners love to say Korea is "not developed" or "third world"---it is developed, dumb ass, and it's not third world---Koreans love to see how their country compares statistically with others.
13 comments:
I'd argue that *parts* of Korea aren't developed. Open sewers and a lack of indoor plumbing are usually not signs of a first-world country.
Usually not signs of a first-world country?
Where exactly are you from in the US, Kelsey? And in what types of places are you seeing "open sewers" in Korea? What exactly are you defining as "open sewers," because here in Honolulu, and also in Southern California, "drainage ditches" could easily be described as such.
As for "lack of indoor plumbing," are you familiar with a large region of the the eastern United States called "Appalachia"?
In some areas of Appalachia, up to 16.8% of homes are classified as substandard – having more people than rooms and no indoor plumbing.
In 2000, there were almost 700,000 homes that "lacked complete plumbing."
Alaska... 6.3%
New Mexico... 1.8%
Arizona... 1.1%
Hawaii... 1%
West Virginia... 1%
District of Columbia... 0.9%
Kentucky... 0.9%
Maine... 0.9%
Mississippi... 0.9%
Arkansas... 0.8%
(source)
Here in Hawaii, on rural Oahu and the other islands, lack of proper facilities is no small matter. The 6.3% of Alaska isn't all that surprising, given the layout of the state, but 1% or nearly 2% for those other states is quite appalling.
I've been living in Seoul off and on since I was a teenager, and I remember the effort in the early 1990s to supply every home with "toshi gas" (the city gas network). Retro-fitting done all over the place so that people wouldn't have to keep going outside in the cold to change the yŏntan brick. I don't know where they are, but I imagine there are still some homes out in the countryside that are heated that way. I know some very isolated homes use outhouses and composting, but they have a source of tap water (at least the ones I've been in).
I can't ever recall seeing an open sewer in Seoul where stuff coming from a toilet would be flowing, and I've lived in some old neighborhoods.
Anyway, what I was going to say in response to the OP was that the drive to climb up the rankings has been a major engine of change — and a willingness for people to make sacrifice — since the 1960s. Without that, Korea would be a far, far different place than it is now (maybe akin to rural inland China a few years ago).
Korea needs to find a new model for development, but I don't know if people are ready to shake off this type of impetus for improvement.
I've been to all but two states in the US (and I'm not counting drive-thru or layovers), so I feel I'm pretty qualified to talk about the US as a whole.
Here in Jindo, we have small cement ditches that run alongside most of the houses and small apartment buildings. Greywater (water from sinks, washing machines, etc) runs straight into them. Sometimes, even "blackwater" goes into them - there's a few alleys here that I have had the misfortune of being in when someone flushes the toilet - you can see the results flush right out a pipe in the side of the building and into said ditch. It smells awful.
Most of your experience has been in cities, I see. Rural Korea is quite different, Kushibo. I see many houses here that still use the heating bricks, and for many the only source of water they have is a hose outside.
And did I ever say that I felt that the US was 100% first-world? No. I've certainly been in many parts of the US that I would readily describe as third world. Pretty much every country in the world has those areas. All I was saying is that Korea has those areas too.
Sorry, I was thrown off by what you meant by "Open sewers and a lack of indoor plumbing are usually not signs of a first-world country."
Yes, the US has plenty of places like that, unfortunately.
Though I haven't been there in years, I'm actually quite interested in Chindo, Wando, and the other island counties in the western and southern archipelagos, especially with a focus on general health care. (I might do a public health capstone project comparing them with, say, Lanai or Molokai here in the Aloha State.)
Chindo is one of the most isolated parts of what is historically the most economically beleaguered region of the country (Chŏlla, particularly South Chŏlla), a region that — by design, some believe — was bypassed in terms of the economic miracle that began in the 1960s and 1970s.
This is the source of much lingering animosity (han, if you will) even today, and one reason that Chŏlla voters are so willing to elect left-wing candidates in such overwhelming numbers.
Kelsey, how close is the closest McDonald's to you? There's an informal model of relative economic progress which uses McDonald's franchises in a new market as a means of determining stages of economic development.
Though Pizza Hut, Burger King, and even Winchell's had already been established in Korea, it wasn't until spring 1988 that the first McDonald's came to Korea, in Apkujŏng, then the most affluent part of Seoul, the most affluent region of Korea.
So, roughly speaking, when an area finally gets a McDonald's, that area has achieved the level of economic development that Apkujŏng had in 1988. If Chindo and other nearby areas have no Mickey D's, that's a sign of just how far behind the rest of the country that region is.
I imagine Starbucks could probably be used as a similar gauge nowadays, but I don't recall when the first Starbucks came to Korea and where.
Most of your experience has been in cities, I see. Rural Korea is quite different, Kushibo. I see many houses here that still use the heating bricks, and for many the only source of water they have is a hose outside.
Sorry... forgot to address this. Yeah, my entire living experience has been in Seoul, in modern dorms, in a 1960s yŏllip chutaek, in a 1930s era two-story house, and a refurbished apatŭ from the early 1980s (which is my home now, though it may be razed and rebuilt into a nicer and bigger place in the next few years).
But I am well-traveled in Korea, going through many obscure pockets even most native Koreans wouldn't have visited. I've clocked around half a million kilometers on the three cars I've owned, crisscrossing the country north to south and east to west, and not just on the expressways.
Nevertheless, your Chindo living experience is quite different from my own living experience. It must be like stepping back into time when you get off the ferry.
Kushibo - is there any particular reason you insist on using the outdated McCune-Reischauer system for romanization? It's Jindo now, not Chindo. There's only one sign left on the island that I see with it spelled that way.
Jindo's quite behind, yes. To give you an idea, we only have one family mart, and when we got a 7-11 two months ago, it was a HUGE event. The closest McDonalds, or even Lotteria, is in Mokpo, an hour away. Jindo is quite sparsely populated - there are only 20,000 people spread across an island an hour wide and an hour long.
Your public health thing might be interesting to see. I've always been impressed with the cleanliness, etc, of hospitals in places like Gwangju, but when I was in the hospital yesterday here in Jindo, there were bloodstains on the bed they had me laying in, and they didn't clean or in any way sanitize the thermometer they used on me after I watched them use it on 4 other people. Lovely.
Also, I should mention that it's a higher percentage here in Jindo that are without plumbing. From my apartment window, I can spot at least 5 houses right now that have a latrine outside. One of the 7 schools I used to teach at here didn't even have indoor plumbing.
Okay, well I'm not going to get into this too much. I'm from Western PA, went to school in rural PA, and have passed through West Virginia numerous times. My father and brother have volunteered with Appalachia / Habitat for Humanity and have seen poverty that ought to be a national embarrassment. Gangjin county---and I've been through just about all of it---puts parts of PA and WVA to shame.
Kushibo I've written about WVA before:
http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2008/11/so-this-is-going-on-in-west-virginia.html
It's an issue near and dear to my heart, perhaps most of all because it's not that far off culturally from Pittsburgh.
Anyway, when people---not saying you kelsey---talk about Korea not being developed, they invariably talk about culture. As if anyone's native culture is exemplery (sp)?
And I told you this in person, kelsey, but these 1st/2nd/3rd world definitions are inaccurate and outdated, and really don't belong in anyone's vocabulary nowadays. I find most people have no idea what they're talking about when they assign a -world value to a country.
Brian, did you see 20/20's special, "A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains?" Diane Sawyer went back to her roots (Appalachia) and documented the unemployment, extreme drug use, poverty, and tooth decay thanks to Mountain Dew mouth. This special aired back in February.
You can track down the video at ABC news or at a couple of other places on the web. It's heartbreaking, but you can find similar stories all over the U.S. They did also mention that overall the situation is getting better and many areas are thriving, but the lack of education still keeps a lot of them down and out. It doesn't help that the high school dropout rate is so high
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Story?id=6865077&page=1
John
I can't resist--what is Mountain Dew mouth?
Samuel,
It's similar to "meth" mouth, but the decay is caused by pretty much everyone (including infants) ingesting Mountain Dew 24/7 in the Appalachians because they desire the high caffeine content. You can find more info. on the web, and it isn’t pretty.
Kushibo,
I just got back from visiting a reservoir southwest of Daejeon where I help some elderly friends plant their peppers and rice every spring in return for their giving me a small parcel of land to plant some okra, beans, and red globe radishes on. Their small farm is located downstream of several cattle farms and the waste from the farms runs into a creek that also feeds the reservoir. I was shocked three years ago the first time we were watering their peppers, and established ginseng beds, with this contaminated water from the creek, but that’s just the way things are done out there. I don’t know if anyone gets sick from it, but there are also some hog farms in the area as well with their manure lagoons a stone’s throw away from a city of about a million and a half inhabitants.
By the way, I personally don’t know about Seoul’s water, but here in Daejeon you cannot drink the tap water. Everyone in town relies on bottled mineral water. While South Korea is advanced in many ways, their water system is in desperate need of an upgrade in this city. I just wish I would have known about the situation before I drank from the tap when I first arrived and paid for it with the worst Montezuma’s revenge of my life. I lived in my bathroom for close to a week.
So what's killing all the American kids then? I'd assumed that there'd be less road accident deaths there but perhaps not?
I'm not surprised anymore
http://failblog.org/2009/05/08/serious-parenting-fail/
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