The Good Life, Hard Luck and BASE Jumping.

In any developing country (and I believe Korea is 'developing' and really only started on the road to a real economy with the onset of real elections in 1994) there can be trials and tribulations for those who lead (politicians, heads of business) and follow (workers, students). Don't get me wrong, Korea has made gigantic strides in the last 50 years (thanks mainly to the iron-grip of their president/dictator from 1961 to 1979, Park Chung Hee) and in the last 10 years (when Korea really started to open up to Western influences)--but things are still in a state of flux here. Business practices have changed (although they retain much of the old flavour), politics...well, politics seems to still be the same..., relationships between people has changed (albeit only a little, Koreans still follow Confucius tenets and defer to age, men and the learned) and even language has changed (as the Internet and chatting has lead to the truncation of many words).

With these changes comes inefficiencies. One can capitalize on them or be a victim. The lady in the BMW below may have done both. She is likely enjoying the ride in her Z4, but (according to this newspaper article she is also a victim of over-pricing--something that BMW, I assume, does not mind as they can have a higher profit. (One other part of this may be that BMW has certain 'import duties' over and above the government ones that need to be paid in order to sell their cars here, such is another inefficiency.)


The BMW Z4...a pricey car in this town.

But what about those who cannot afford a luxury car, a flat in Kangnam (the priciest district in Seoul) and an expense account at the local watering hole? Or worse, those who had it all and then lost it? What happens to them? Well, for some, the answer is suicide (hence my mention of BASE jumping (Buildings, Antennae, Spans and Earth) in the title. Since there are few guns in Korea (heck, many policemen do a Barney Fife and don't even walk around with a loaded gun, the bullets are in their pocket!) the next best thing is jumping. While inline skating one day near the river I saw police taking 2 jumpers from the water--ug,that was not cool. Sorry for the imagery.

One thing that irks me about Korea sometimes is the lack of discretion in some matters (one faux pas I probably just committed above). We know that reporting suicide can lead to more suicides, but they continue to report suicides as they happen. Some of the stories are truly heart-wrenching and I (yes, even I) weep a bit when I hear some of them--this is not something you get desensitized to. If you're of strong mind take a look at this article on recent suicides.

Of course, it's not just in Korea. In the U.S. military suicide is the #2 killer (I'm not sure if friendly fire or actual action are #1, you start to wonder sometimes).

The interesting thing I found from reading all of this (not that it makes me an expert by any means) is that Korea, although it may have the 4th highest suicide rate in the 29 OECD countries, it was waaaay down the list globally (Korea always wants to be #1 compared to the top nations, which is why they probably used this statistic). Countries in Eastern Europe (although some of these 'suicides' may be underworld related), Scandinavia, and even the US and Canada, Hong Kong and Japan had higher rates than Korea did in 1994. (From Table 1 in this paper/abstract
In true Korean fashion, the rates here went from 6.8 per 100,000 in 1998 to 16.5 in 2000 and 18.1 in 2002...man, does everything here have a logarithmic curve to it?

Some also turn to murder, such as happened 10 years ago and lately again (and I'm sure there were other cases in-between), but that's another story.

Perhaps this is just another part of living in a place where the past is meeting the future head on.