Post by Sunday at midnight.
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Study of Subjective Quality of Life/Happiness in 23 OECD Nations' Children: Korean Children lowest happiness, by a large margin
3. Korean youth that subjectively value money most are the most unhappy; Korean youth cite after school academies as contributing most to stress; Korea dead last in childhood happiness by 20 points to the next unhappy youth country, Hungary; Korea 34 points lower than the average of other OECD countries' youth happiness; Korean youth felt these subjective anxieties despite objectively placing in the top in OECD in many youth categories like [1] educational opportunity and attainment, [2] material conditions, [3] health, and [4] safety. This reminds me of the nebulous category of subjective happpiness and reminds me of Veenhoven's earlier article about the potential concern of 'unconnectedness' of subjective happiness with material indicators.
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[Editorial] Our unhappy children
It is uncomfortable to ask our children whether they are happy. There is no way we can expect happiness from our children when they are being trained to compete with and defeat their friends almost as soon as they are out of the crib. Yet the Korea Pang Jung-hwan Foundation and Yonsei University Institute for Social Development Studies posed just this question to 6,410 young people. The results were as expected. Compared to the findings of surveys on children in 23 OECD member nations, their subjective happiness ratings put them at dead last by a substantial margin.
South Korea placed a full 34 points lower than the OECD average of 100, with a difference of more than 20 points from the next country up, Hungary.
Given that this is the third straight year, it now seems that psychological anxieties and discontentment are becoming part of the constitution of this country’s children. In particular, children felt these anxieties despite placing among the very top in objective indicators such as educational opportunity and attainment, material conditions, health, and safety.
This can only be the outcome of lives spent being driven around like racehorses. It stems from a structure that is rigidly organized with competition.
In other countries, there has generally been a proportional relationship between educational indices examining things like academic achievement and subjective happiness indices measuring satisfaction with school and home life. In the case of South Korea’s children, however, the relationship between the two has been precisely the inverse. This is almost certainly the result of their being driven to abandon things like human relationships and enter a murderous race for the best grades.
The results also tally with the findings of a study by the Korean Teachers’ and Education Workers’ Union (KTU, Jeon Gyo Jo), which found that 80 percent of children’s stress comes from attending afterschool academies and worries about grades. In addition, children selected money as the most important element in happiness the higher their grade level.
And the children who selected money placed lower on happiness ratings.
This means that as they get older, children are suffering from a severe sense of burden over grades, success, and money.
The problem is apparent. So, too, is the path toward a solution. The first step is to break away from the jungle-like competitiveness of education. The next is to reestablish the framework of education and life to promote family bonds and friendship and cooperation with friends. If the children who carry the future of South Korean society on their shoulders are unhappy, that society cannot be happy. There needs to be a profound awakening from adults.
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http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_editorial/476506.html
1.Park Kyu Hwan
ReplyDelete2.Why do the poeple commit suicide?
3.There are lots of reasons why poeple commit suicide. I think the biggest reason is that poeple can't rely on something. If they get stress from work, someone should take care of them.
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Pressure from work is something unavoidable and can bring about deadly consequences, if it's poorly managed. Experts say the intensity of such pressure has increased in recent years due to Korea's no-holds-barred corporate culture in the face of the economic downturn.
Four elite professionals from various fields - finance, manufacturing and academia - have killed themselves in the past four months after failing to overcome work-related pressures.
On Wednesday, a noted physics professor at Sogang University in Seoul was found dead. Police said the 58-year-old scientist, who was touted as one of the Koreans who could potentially win a Nobel Prize, jumped to his death from his apartment in Seoul.
He left his family and colleagues a simple suicide note that addressed how much pressure he had shouldered in his position.
"Physics is my life but it's placed an extreme weight of pressure on my shoulders," the scientist said in the note. "I've worked to complete a major paper, but things aren't going as well as I had expected."
Last week, a 47-year-old mid-level manager at Kookmin Bank, one of Korea's largest commercial backs, also jumped to his death from a bridge over the Han River.
Police are still not sure what actually drove the promising Internet engineer to kill himself. A variety of rumors behind his death are being widely circulated.
But the testimony of the deceased's family indicates he apparently committed suicide due to extreme pressure he faced in developing the bank's up-to-date Internet transaction system, and coping with outside scrutiny following the spat between the bank president and financial regulators.
Late last month, a 51-year-old executive of Samsung Electronics, who was lauded in 2006 as the company's best engineer, was found dead in an apparent suicide.
According to people close to the deceased, the executive had been exposed to extreme stress from work after he was promoted to a position responsible for nurturing a business unit that is now in the red but could be lucrative in the future.
Last October, a senior executive at Deutsche Securities' Seoul office also jumped to his death because of work-related pressure.
One of the family members of the deceased was quoted as saying, "He blamed himself several times for not doing his duty well."
Experts say the intensity of the work environment in society has hardened in recent years. They cited endless competition and the "winner-take-all" atmosphere, which are deeply rooted in society following the global recession, as major culprits for the change.
According to the National Health Insurance Corporation, the number of workers who complained about work-related stress stood at 101,000 in 2009, up from 66,000 in 2005.
A recent survey of 800 corporate workers showed nearly six percent of them have considered committing suicide at some point due to stress from their workplace.
But the worrisome fact is that only a handful of workers struggling from pressure at work vent stress in healthy fashion, for example through outdoor pursuits, experts say.
Only 14.8 percent of the respondents said they relax through outdoor activities.
Nearly 50 percent of male respondents chose drinking alcohol and smoking as the favorite way to unwind, the survey showed. The most sought-after means to relax for women was chatting with friends.
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http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/03/117_61618.html
1. Yeo Min Sook
ReplyDelete2. About social indicator in medical service.
3. In welfare, medical service have a important position. However, measuring quality of medical service could draw a different conclusion by what indicator set up. To talk only about the number of hospital, Korea have high quality of medical service. But the number of medical staff is below the OECD average. This mean that one hospital is operated by small staff, and also the medical facilities are inadequate at variety of area in medical service like medical care for the aged. It is important to expand the number of medical staff, but distributing medical staff is more important for medical service.
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Hospital staff levels lag OECD average
Korea has more hospitals than the OECD average, but they are staffed below the normal rate, raising concerns over the quality of the country’s medical services.
According to the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, there are 81,681 medical facilities nationwide, including hospitals, clinics, public healthcare centers, maternity nursing care centers, dentists, pharmacies and Oriental medical centers. The figure is equivalent to 58.5 facilities per every million people, well exceeding the OECD average of 31.03.
The number of dental hospitals, Oriental medical centers as well as nursing homes significantly increased between 2000 and 2010, reflecting the need for wellbeing in an aging society, the institute said.
However, the number of medical staff is still well below the OECD average. There are 2.01 doctors per 1,000 people in Korea while the OECD average is 3.11.
For the number of nurses, the figure was starker: Korea marked 2.37 per every 1,000, less than half the OECD average of 6.74.
However, the HIRAS said that the figures may not necessarily translate into low quality medical services in Korea.
“The number of medical staff has been on a constant rise since 2000. Over the period, doctors have increased by 14.1 percent and nurses by 15.8 percent. If we continue to keep this pace, the shortage will be settled,” Choi In-aug, an HIRA official, said.
By Bae Ji-sook (baejisook@heraldm.com)
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http://www.koreaherald.com/national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20110308000613