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South Korea covered up mass abuse, killings of 'vagrants' in the 70s and 80s

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Please. Let's end the Olympics. So much shady stuff from those games.

They need to be shut down and rebooted for sure. The entire host selection process needs to be scrapped. Just rotate between a few cities with existing infrastructure like LA, London, Sydney, etc. No more bidding.
 

ibyea

Banned
I take it there's absolutely no social safety net in South Korea.

There is. For example, universal health care. I don't know how strong S. Korea's safety net is but to say absolutely none is false. That said I know one aspect that is not enough. There is a lot of elderly poverty in S. Korea.
 
The next Winter Games (2018) gonna take place in Pyeongchang.

Hopefully things won't be brutal this time around in cleaning up the streets.
 
There is. For example, universal health care. I don't know how strong S. Korea's safety net is but to say absolutely none is false. That said I know one aspect that is not enough. There is a lot of elderly poverty in S. Korea.

If you have a social security number you're ok. But there's a lot of Koreans who have earned and do earn their living without one.
 

Kas

Member
It's things like this that make me sick. Not the "oh this is bad" sick, but violent, red-seeing rage at the world because people knew about it, but that almighty dollar reigns supreme.

I know all of humanity isn't bad, but its hard to believe that when things like this surface.
 

NEO0MJ

Member
It's things like this that make me sick. Not the "oh this is bad" sick, but violent, red-seeing rage at the world because people knew about it, but that almighty dollar reigns supreme.

I know all of humanity isn't bad, but its hard to believe that when things like this surface.

Plus, don't forget the war with the communists. A lot of western nations were willing to form alliances with brutal rulers as long as they helped them fight the reds. Though sometimes they also had the same principals as our founding fathers.
 
Sadly South Korea has a lot of incidents like this that are covered up in their recent history. They cover them up to keep a stable face and deflect from issues like most governments with issues like these do.

Post imperial Japan colonization for example, during the rise of tensions between what would become North and South, there were mass killings, rapes, and destruction of smaller villages and towns by what would be the South/was the south throughout the war time era. Jeju island for example a popular resort area these days was home to a pretty brutal mass killing and destroying a good bit of the island because they were most likely going to join the North in terms of ideology. For decades it was literally illegal to talk about it because it made the nation lose face and would be considered treasonous. Government finally had to admit to the incident when a mass grave was found right next to the Jeju airport a few years ago.

Huge list of things like this where until there is a ton of evidence that leaks to the public its a "understood" be quiet about it thing sadly. There was a reason so many people left it that's for sure.

Most societies/nations that base their existence heavily on traditionalism tend to save face when they do shit that's wrong. This isn't just Asian countries. This is also pretty much seen in Conservative groups in a lot of Western nations.
 

peakish

Member
Brutal read. So many convenient "no records" and "I can't recall events from back then" replies from officials. I really hope the victims get their apologies and money owed someday, what a damn nightmare.
 

Peru

Member
President Park has more of her dad in her than she can show in public.

The good news is the latest national assembly election results, this month, where her party lost majority as the first ruling party ever showed the way of the future - more young people showed up to vote, and succeeded in giving the old codgers a kick in the ass - it's the old people who went through this, ironically, who vote for Park and her conservative party.

146070823911_20160416.JPG
 

YN12

Banned
I think I saw a Korean movie about this some time ago. It was about a social worker finding work at an institution and finding out about widespread abuse going on.

It was a hard watch but well worth it.
 
I believe you're talking about Dogani. Fantastic movie, disturbing and very depressing subject matter. It is not based on this but on a different factual event.

Jeon-gwan ye-u

Jeon-gwan ye-u is said to be a result of South Korea's system of legal education and appointment of judges. All law students who pass the bar examination (formerly limited to 300 students, though the cutoff was raised to 1,000 in the early 2000s) attend a two-year course at the Judicial Training Research Institute before being considered for appointment as a judge or public prosecutor; this training offers them the opportunity to develop close bonds with one another. Those who are not appointed have the option of becoming defense attorneys, or pursuing other professions.[5] Judges and public prosecutors are thus appointed to their positions at a young age, and many retire early, in their 40s and 50s, in order to work as private attorneys.[1][5]

Well this might explain the apparent advocacy gap between homeless/mentally ill/disabled victims and the wealthy institutions that exploit them. Damn.
 
South Korea manages to get away with some incredibly fucked up shit because of its infamous neighbor. While it's not as bad as it used to be, ever today large scale police violence against protestors and workers is the norm.

Not to mention the island of disabled slaves mentioned above.
 

jelly

Member
That's horrendous. I imagine a lot of awful shit gets brushed under the carpet but it's awful wherever it happens and even worse when you don't own up to it. Japan is weird like that with WW2. It's amazing when empathy just vanishes and people are just cruel and vicious, there is no excuse for it.
 
I believe the standard of living and economy of North Korea were actually quite a bit better than in the South up until the mid 70s or so. This was probably due to the North being much better developed than the South was at the time of their split. South Korea immediately after the war and really up until democratization was quite a brutal place to live.

It wasn't really that much more developed as the Korean War destroyed most of both of the Korea. The increase standard of Living conditions in the North was mainly due to all the help they got from the soviet union and that the more educated lived in the North while the south was more agricultural. North Korea really got fucked starting in the 90s but was plenty of corrupt a decade before but the food distribution systems they had didn't fail yet.

For the South it was more just you typical Military dictatorship pretending to be a democracy until the 90s (Arguable 1997 ) .
 

Ikaran

Neo Member
I wonder if the people joking about best/worst Korea even care about that tragedy or they just enter to make the joke.

I hope now that the story has even reached to the international media someone ends up in jail, but I guess it's expecting to much...
 
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