Does anyone remember this LAT article re: Koreans and suicide?

[Jed Dilligan]

http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-op-rodriguez11mar11,1,1436378.column?coll=la-news-columns

snip

Over the last decade, suicides in South Korea have more than doubled, from 11.8 per 100,000 people in 1995 to 26.1 per 100,000 in 2005. Today, suicide is the No. 1 cause of death for South Korean men in their 20s and is increasingly common among the growing ranks of the elderly. Overall, it is the fourth-leading cause of death in the country, ahead of traffic accidents.





I'm not trying to chalk up the VT shooting motive to ethnicity, but I do have a feeling some of the same cultural factors mentioned in this article might be involved.

[zanne]

1. Well, we all knew this was coming.

It's South Korea's fault.

[Jed Dilligan]

10. Don't know how you got that

from my post.

With so many people leaping up and down trying to blame guns or American culture or maleness itself, I think my post was fairly moderate: a recent article from a major newspaper discussing the alarming rates of self-destruction in the culture of the shooter's origins.

Oh, never mind, ya got me. I really DO think South Korea is to blame. :eyes:

[nashville_brook]

2. it's more relevant to examine his culture than ours

he was operating from his conceptual framework. he wasn't a "macho gun-toting American male." he was a young Korean man in a strange country studying English. He was an English Major -- I wonder what Garrison Keillor would have to say about that.

i remember this article, and ones like it pertaining to suicide rates in Japan. Isn't the rub that failure isn't accepted -- that it's more noble to take one's life than to live with failure?

[Neecy]

3. a strange country?

Hadn't he lived in the US since he was a young child?

[nashville_brook]

8. i moved to east tennessee, near sw virginia as a teen -- it's a STRANGE country

even to Americans. it's HIS culture to examine. not anyone else's -- IF you're inclined to examine these things. if not, then move along to something you'd rather talk about.

[Bicoastal]

4. Oversimplifying

This guy murdered as many innocent strangers as possible before turning the gun on himself. Nowhere in Korean culture is that treated with anything but revulsion.

Besides, stop labeling him as a disoriented foreigner--he came here in 1992.

[nashville_brook]

7. just saying his culture is what to look at

sure he's an evil fuck.

[WinkyDink]

5. Suicide is one thing; mass homicide quite another.

[nashville_brook]

9. gee, i guess it is -- never looked at it that way.

:sarcasm:

[Fresh_Start]

6. Men kill their women everyday

sometimes they kill their children
sometimes they commit suicide so its a murder-suicide instead of just a murder

its not Korean
its belief that women are their property