Children's Day

What is the true meaning of the word ‘family’? Family is an acronym for ‘Father and Mother, I Love You.’ (Song Kil-wan, the founder and the manager Hi Family, Korea)

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The quotation above was taken from Dorothy Nam’s article that wrote about the meaning of family in South Korea related to the Children’s Day (Eorini Nal) that was commemorated each May 5th as the national holiday. On this day, the Korean children get big attention from their parents. Usually, their parents take them out for picnic to the garden or amusement park, watched the film, et cetera.

If we saw that the children day became the national holiday in Korea, we will definitely imagine that parents in Korea really pay attention to their children. This is correctly true, but in reality, many children’s fate in Korea was still unlucky. Why?

The biggest problem in Korean family was limited time of the togetherness. Generally, the Korean family really focused on their children’s education so that the father should work hard and rarely had time to be with his family. The supporting public facilities for children and parents in their relaxed time are also very limited.

According Dorothy Nam, compared with the American society, parents in the United States often have dinner together in the restaurant with their children, or watching TV while eating popcorn. However, in Korea, after working, the father will go to the coffee shops or bars with his colleagues whereas the mother stay in the house with the children. There are so many bars and coffee shops in Korea, but the number of family restaurants could only be counted by fingers.

Culturally, the Korean father showed his affection to the family rarely. They were not used to embrace and express their affection to their children and wives periodically. Beside that, the Korean family condition statistically showed a very bad condition. According to The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the divorce level in Korea is the second highest in the world.

At the time when I wrote this article in mid of 2004, South Korea suffered the unstable economic condition. This caused the height of the unemployment rate and the number of families that were involved in bad credit. According to a survey, approximately four million Koreans could not pay their credit card and generally, each family owed about two million won. The strong of economic pressure caused the height of stress so that the suicide and violence cases in the households increased.

For instances, a father killed his two children and wife because they did not want to do suicide. Whereas, according to Korean police statistics, the number of people who are arrested because of the household violence increased from 15,557 peoples in 2001, 16,324 peoples in 2002, and to 17,770 peoples during 2003.

Observing the height of domestic violence in the society, made us more concern on the children life in the Korean family. A newspaper reported that one of the three wives in Korea got physical violence by her husband. Recently, a woman put divorce lawsuit -- the very rare matter happened in Korea -- after 3 decades, minimal once in a week, she was hit by her husband. The other woman was taken to the hospital because her ribs were broken because of being stricken by her husband, while the other woman had eardrum broken after being stricken with baseball stick by her husband (Korean Times, May 18, 2004).

The unharmonious family made many under age children witnessed the domestic violence and affected by its impact. There was a 20's years-old student who often watches her mother was stricken by her father suffered physical and mental pressure and has to be sent to psychiatric hospital.

Worsening economic condition of Korea was not only one cause of unharmonious family in the country that is so called The Land of Morning Calm. Observing its root, the unharmonious husband-wife relations in this society was influenced by the Confucianism doctrine that becomes the living guide of Koreans. According to Professor Eom Myo-seop from Catholic University of Daegu, Confucianism gave the top priority to man and made woman become subordinate. Korean woman must obey three rules that were mentioned in samjongjido. According to these rules, the woman must obey her father when she was young, her husband after marrying, and obedient to her son when her husband died.

Although the patriarchal system has begun to change in Korea, this point of view is still often followed by the Korean family. Many husbands regarded his wife and children as his “own”.

This caused Song Kil-wan established Hi Family during 1992 to give counseling and advocations to Korean family. If Song’s efforts were successful, happiness would really no longer become a sweet dream of Korean family and the children will definitely get “the children’s day” in everyday.***

Thanks to Hendry for the pics!