| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
bassexpander
Joined: 13 Sep 2007
Location: Someplace you'd rather be.
|
 Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2008 6:34 am Post subject: Intercultural Children Vulnerable to Child Abuse |
 |
|
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2008/10/116_33251.html
So.... why don't we just blame it on the flawed idea of intercultural marriage, rather than the male doing the abuse?
| Quote: |
Intercultural Children Vulnerable to Child Abuse
By Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff Reporter
Nearly 70 percent of teenagers aged between 16 and 18 from intercultural families either drop out of high school or are discouraged from studying more after graduating from middle school, a lawmaker said Friday.
Rep. Won Hee-mok of the governing Grand National Party (GNP) said the figure is eight times higher than that of children born of Korean parents.
``Of 18,691 children from parents of different cultural backgrounds aged between 7 and 12, 15.4 percent are not attending elementary school, a rate 22 times as high as that of children of a single Korean racial background,'' said the lawmaker during a National Assembly audit.
Won said 39.7 percent of children aged between 13 and 15 from the minority group have dropped out of or did not go on to middle school after graduating from elementary school.
The number of such families has increased in the nation since the early 1990s as single farmers in rural areas began looking for spouses in Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines.
Since then, their soul-mate-search has expanded into Central Asian countries including Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
Foreign migrant workers also played a role in hiking the number of inter-nationality couples here.
The increase in such marriages led human rights activists to launch diverse community-based advocacy programs aimed at helping foreign spouses, mostly female ones, as many became the victims of domestic violence and other social problems.
In time activists turned their eyes to the welfare of children from minority families.
A survey conducted by the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs found 11.5 percent of children of a cultural minority background had difficulty getting along with their peers and 5.3 percent experienced bullying at school.
Another report produced by the same ministry said an increasing number of these children are becoming victims of child abuse and domestic violence.
According to the report, children from these families are twice as vulnerable to child abuse and domestic violence as children born into Korean couples.
Experts say the language barrier makes it even more difficult for the minority children to adjust themselves to the school environment.
To help minority families, the National Assembly passed a bill designed to support multicultural families last March.
Key elements of the bill include assisting children and parents with adequate language and cultural education.
Rep. Won claimed policymakers needed to look beyond the human rights of the spouse and now is the time to focus on the welfare of their children.
``The fundamental problem is that the government has no accurate data on the overview of multicultural families,'' Won said.
The Ministry of Public Administration and Security and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology have presented different figures regarding the number of children from intercultural families.
The lawmaker argued the government should have accurate information of these families first and then provide community-based multi-level policy support in schools, childcare centers and community centers to help the children.
[email protected] |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Cheonmunka
Joined: 04 Jun 2004
|
| Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2008 5:07 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| So.... why don't we just blame it on the flawed idea of intercultural marriage, rather than the male doing the abuse? |
I think that what they mean is looking to the welfare of the children means setting up places like women's refuge etc.
I think men (all men around the World) should have to go through courses like anger management, family care etc, and come out with a certificate of fitness.
Korea sort of broaches the topic of having all men go through a system, something that gives them their place in society, but it is a military system. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Typhoon
Joined: 29 May 2007
Location: Daejeon
|
| Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2008 5:14 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Interesting article. At least they are starting to see the problem. That is the first step even if they aren't exactly getting what the real problem is. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
bassexpander
Joined: 13 Sep 2007
Location: Someplace you'd rather be.
|
| Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2008 9:45 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
``Of 18,691 children from parents of different cultural backgrounds aged between 7 and 12, 15.4 percent are not attending elementary school, a rate 22 times as high as that of children of a single Korean racial background,'' said the lawmaker during a National Assembly audit. |
It's because of a variety of reasons... probably a main one is that several of the parents are probably illegal, and don't want to tip off the gov't. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Typhoon
Joined: 29 May 2007
Location: Daejeon
|
| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 5:33 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| If one parent is Korean there would be no tip off for the gov't. One Korean parent=a Korean kid. The other parents visa issues would have no bearing on a child attending or not attending school because the Korean parent would be paying taxes. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
|
| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 5:45 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| I remember when I attended this Catholic church in Cheonan hearing about Pinays (Phillipine women) being abused in some cases by their Korean husbands. Of course, spousal abuse happens all over the world, but it's covered up over here in many ways. Now, I don't understand why the children of intercultural marriages would have a language barrier if they have a Korean father unless he is not really there for his child and the mother just communicates with the child in Tagalog or Vietnamese or what have you. Yes, I can see children bullying the children who are different, and that's a serious issue. Perhaps, the schools should pay more attention to those kids until society becomes more accepting. The schools should teach about acceptance for those kids, but they don't. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Typhoon
Joined: 29 May 2007
Location: Daejeon
|
| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 9:01 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| I can understand how kids could have poor Korean if their mother isn't Korean. My daughter's Korean is way, way better than her English. When I am home everyone speaks mostly English, but in kindergarten and home with mom it is mostly Korean. It is easy to see how kids who don't have a native Korean speaker at home a lot could speak pretty bad Korean. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
jajdude
Joined: 18 Jan 2003
|
| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 10:42 pm Post subject: |
|
|
"A survey conducted by the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs found 11.5 percent of children of a cultural minority background had difficulty getting along with their peers and 5.3 percent experienced bullying at school. "
--->So on average, cultural minority background kids get along with their peers about the same as all other kids, and get bullied even less? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
The evil penguin
Joined: 24 May 2003
Location: Doing something naughty near you.....
|
| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 11:23 pm Post subject: |
|
|
[quote="Cheonmunka"]
| Quote: |
I think men (all men around the World) should have to go through courses like anger management, family care etc, and come out with a certificate of fitness.
. |
Because ALL men are naturally violent abusers at heart (hey we are born that way) and cannot be trusted to have restraint or moral character.
And women are always instinctively better carers than their male counterparts and are never responsible for the abuse occuring to their child.
yeah....I have a few issues with that... |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Cheonmunka
Joined: 04 Jun 2004
|
| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 6:54 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| If one parent is Korean there would be no tip off for the gov't. One Korean parent=a Korean kid. The other parents visa issues would have no bearing on a child attending or not attending school because the Korean parent would be paying taxes. |
The education office often send us invites through our children at school to attend various functions for damunhwa kids - which is sort of international/Korean kids. So, the Ed office do know that their mother is Korean, their father another country. They keep a database from when they ask schools to give info about all the kids - backgrounds etc. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Privateer
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Location: Easy Street.
|
| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 9:55 am Post subject: |
|
|
I believe spousal and child abuse happens at higher rates with people who 'import' brides in the West too. Perhaps the kids become scapegoats for the problems in the marriage deriving from the often dysfunctional attitude of the husband to the wife and/or communication problems. Don't know what else would explain it.
I'd rather see the headline of the article say 'Children of Intercultural Marriage Suffer Discrimination in Korea', tho'. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
|
| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 6:35 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Privateer wrote: |
I believe spousal and child abuse happens at higher rates with people who 'import' brides in the West too. Perhaps the kids become scapegoats for the problems in the marriage deriving from the often dysfunctional attitude of the husband to the wife and/or communication problems. Don't know what else would explain it.
I'd rather see the headline of the article say 'Children of Intercultural Marriage Suffer Discrimination in Korea', tho'. |
I am not really sure of that. In the West, intercultural marriages are accepted, while people from other countries are often viewed as inferior in Korea, let's face it. Mixing is still highly frowned upon even in major cities in Korea. That was a major problem in the West and still is somewhat, but here it's just much worse, and we know that. A lot of these men marry women from those other countries, because they are either too old-fashioned, too old, or they can't get Korean women or a combination of two of the items I mentioned. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
billybrobby
Joined: 09 Dec 2004
|
| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 6:51 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| There's one thing I'd like to know. As I understand it, most of the intercultural marriages occur with Korean farmers and other people with low incomes from rural areas. So to be accurate, this study should have controlled for those factors. It wouldn't be fair to compare a kid from the boonies to a kid from kangnam. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
|
| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 7:23 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| billybrobby wrote: |
| There's one thing I'd like to know. As I understand it, most of the intercultural marriages occur with Korean farmers and other people with low incomes from rural areas. So to be accurate, this study should have controlled for those factors. It wouldn't be fair to compare a kid from the boonies to a kid from kangnam. |
You have a point, because fathers in the urban areas would be in a part of Korea where people are generally more open-minded. I mean in Seoul, at least, people are generally more liberal than other areas of Korea. I am not sure how liberal areas like Daejeon, Goyang, and Busan are. They don't strike me as areas that are as liberal as Seoul.
I know a girl who has a few bosses and that includes this Russian woman whose daughter is half Korean, and she lives in the city, and is a very pretty young girl, but she may have a hard time in the city, even, and her husband is no farmer. This is, however, true in North America as well, but we promote multi-culturalism. It makes a difference. Korea needs to care about their children whether they are mixed or not. Times have changed. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
|
| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 8:07 pm Post subject: |
|
|
[quote="Cheonmunka"]
| Quote: |
I think men (all men around the World) should have to go through courses like anger management, family care etc, and come out with a certificate of fitness.
. |
Because no women would ever dream of killing or injuring kids, right?  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
