Society must weave a tighter protection net
People often compare evil humans to beasts. That is not fair ― for animals. Watch nature documentaries on TV, and one can see how devoted and self-sacrificing animals are to their offspring.
Two recent incidents reaffirmed how some humans are worse than animals and how cruel they can get.
A week ago, police arrested a stepmother and a father for allegedly abusing their 12-year-old son to death. The stepmother was charged with child abuse and murder. The father was accused of chronic child abuse and other charges.
In a portrait at the funeral, the boy was smiling, holding a dinosaur doll. He wore long johns his biological mother had bought for him when he was seven until the final moment of his life. With bruises all over his body, he was so thin that his bones came out through the flesh. He weighed only 30 kg.
Here is another child. The child, left alone for days in midwinter, died quietly in the place where he was supposed to be safest. Only 20 months old, the child's tiny body left a last message to society that he had not been fed for a long time. These were sad portraits of the 21st-century Republic of Korea, which is experiencing a demographic crisis with the lowest birthrate worldwide.
According to data from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, 38 children die a year on average in Korea due to physical abuse or neglect. That means one little victim in less than 10 days. There were signs of impending tragedies. The 12-year-old boy had not been to school since November. His parents told teachers they were homeschooling him, but no school officials visited the home to confirm this and made just three phone calls. The 20-month-old had not received a single mandatory vaccination since the fourth month, and there had been no medical records in the past year.
Society either did not notice or ignored these signs. What should be done?
Last year, the judiciary branch strengthened the punishment of child abusers and murderers by sentencing them to life in prison or death. That must have been expected. However, harsher penalties do not reduce child abuse as in other crimes. The government also decided to expand a pilot project to visit families to help their recovery, beefing up personnel and budget. That will be necessary, too. But these knee-jerk reactions announced whenever we hear new heart-breaking news have limitations to solving the problem more systematically.
Korea should do at least three things to this end.
First, the nation must have a basic law for children. The proposed law should first aim to raise the rate of discovering victimized children. The discovery rate in Korea was 5.02 per 1,000 children last year, up from 1 per 1,000 in 2021. However, it remained far lower than the U.S.' 8.4 and Australia's 12.4. The law should also make reporting child abuse mandatory by punishing non-reporters, enabling child protectors to enter homes suspected of abuse, and forcing the separation of children from their abusers.
Second, Korea must outlaw physical punishment of children at schools, kindergartens, and nurseries, as Germany, Sweden, and Norway have done. It also needs to encourage sparing the rod by banning corporal punishment done in the name of discipline by parents.
Third, the nation should strengthen the right to interview and negotiate with divorced parents. The fifth grader might have avoided the cruel fate had his biological mother been allowed to see his son regularly. The right to interview and negotiate is essential because it is directly linked to proper parenting. In no advanced countries, is the custody of divorced parents as fragmented as in Korea.
Only countries that respect and protect their children can anticipate a future society based on unity and embrace. An old Nigerian saying goes, "It takes a whole village to raise a child." It should be changed in Korea to "It takes a whole society to protect a child."
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