Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Corporal]

Call me naive but this just made me really sad.

We were eating supper at the house of the director of a orinae jib (daycare). Her three kids were in attendance. The youngest was about four or five. (Well, I just assumed the youngest was hers.) My husband turns to me and says "that isn't her son." Well where are his parents? I reply somewhat startled. Turns out his parents are living and perfectly well, but the kid basically lives at this daycare. The parents pay for him to eat, sleep, everything there just like he was a member of the director's family. Why? I demanded of my husband. He kind of shrugged and looked vaguely embarrassed and said "I guess it doesn't make sense to you but that's just what the parents wanted to do."

The last time this little boy saw his mommy and daddy was two weeks ago! He seems really introverted and emotionally developmentally delayed. Well no wonder if he isn't with the people who are supposed to be caring for him!

I just found this whole thing really saddening, wondered if anyone else out there knew of this sort of thing going on, if it was more common than I would have thought (I hope not).

[crazylemongirl]

That seems like a more extreme form of it, but what about the kids who spend just about every waking hour at hogwon/school but do they count.

Also I'm suprised that this place doesn't seem to have many boarding schools. My parents are sending my younger brother off to board at his school next year (he already attends as a day student) as they want to see the world, but don't want to bring him.

CLG

[waterbaby]

At my last job, there was a really cute little girl doing pre-school. She wasn't one of my students but she was popular with all the staff and I knew her well enough. She used to come to pre-school dressed really well and had some funky outfits that made me envy her style ( ). Her hair style was changed every month - cut, perm, colour, whatever.

Then she gradually started coming to pre-school a bit unkempt. She was dirty, had lots of bruises and uncared for scrapes. Her hair was also unwashed. She was no longer the vibrant and happy little girl that she was. She cried a lot and became very withdrawn in class.

Each day, the teachers would clean her. One day, her uncle came and picked her up. He explained that her mother & father didn't want to keep her anymore, nor did her grandmother so she was going to live with her uncle.

That really sickened me. Her mum just decided she didn't want to keep her anymore. Got tired of her little dress up toy. I think of this little girl from time to time and wonder how she's doing. It still makes me upset when I think about it.

Did anyone catch the doco series on the Little Monks (don't know what channel, it's a Korean program that runs a human interest story and screens a development of the same story over a whole week - I could sing the theme song for you!). Anyway, it was heartbreaking. A lot of the little boys at the monestary were orphaned or given up by their mothers who could no longer afford to keep them.

[Chonbuk]

Why oh why do I continue to lose my posts sometimes.

Second try.

I think actually that this is not that rare.

An English teacher in Jeonju had her son living in Namwon with her in-laws, she said she was too tired and sick to take care of him. Later on she became pregnant with her 2nd child, I imagine the new one was also sent to Gran's.

Another family in Jeonju that I used to visit twice a week for "dinner" they took care of their neice. Her parents lived in the States but wanted her raised in Korea. The baby called her auntie Mom, and I imagine probably only saw her parents once a year.

The strangest situation I know of is this family in Daejeon. The 2 older boys (grade 6 and 4) live here with their aunt a 30-unmarried woman. Mom and the baby spend half their time in Daejeon and half their time in Koje-do where Dad lives. The kids explained to me that they live here for school.

What troubles me is that these boys will often be left alone sometimes over night as well. Seems a little bit young to me, and of course Mom is calling all the time, but still I found it unsettling...

Of course week-end families and overseas families are all the rage with the nouveau rich and the educated, but I wonder what kindof values this is setting the kids with.

Cheers,

Chonbuk

ps- can you post some baby pics.

[Corporal]

Chonbuk: baby pic, sure thing, so long as Lemon will host another one for me. I just took a bunch of really cute ones today. I'm on my way to send him a PM....

[HardyandTiny]

It frightened me when I realized how much time children spent being shuffled around from learning institutes to grandma's care to the next- door neighbor's apartment, etc., even though they had both their parents and their families had lots of money.
Many of the mothers of the children told me that they wanted to have a good time, that their husbands sometimes didn't come home for days at a time, that they married at a young age and became pregnant in their first year of marriage. Now I realize I was just used. It is sad.

[Trinny]

I just finished translating divorce documents for a Korean-American couple. What is strange with this case is that they both went back to Korea and decided to leave their 3-year old girl with her grandpa and grandma who are living in the States, because neither of the parents wanted a custody of the child.

Call me naive, but I think half the joy of raising children is to watch them grow. Where is the fun part of parenthood?

[panthermodern]

yea ...

The well healed in the Western World don't have nannies or boarding schools.

Every child in the west is raised by thier happy, homogeneous, nuclear family ... Ward and June all the way ...

Nope ...

We are without flaw ...

Every, single solitary Western Family has;

One Mommy
One Daddy
One White picket fence
And, 1.5 well adjusted children ...

Just ask Hillary ... It takes a village.

To the O.P.: Yes it is strange, but, the world is a strange place.

Is it not better then abandonment or worse ...

How many dumpster kids to the P.D. and the F.D. find yearly in the west.

[Pyongshin Sangja]

I was a child soldier in Angola for ten years. Don't you start with me.

[Hank Scorpio]

[mokpochica]

One teacher I knew (working in a middle school) had two students that were living in an apartment by themselves because their parents didn't want to take care of them. Someone decided not to send them to an orphanage and the teachers at the school looked in on them from time to time.

I hear that sometimes divorced parents (mothers/fathers) give their children to an orphanage when they want to be re-married because the new spouse wants to start fresh without children. I guess that sometimes the parents do visit the kids on weekends at the orphanages though, so it's not a total cutting-off of relations in all cases. Sometimes these children might go to a grandparents as well.

I know of several Korean children and adults that live overseas with cousins, friends, aunts, etc. for a year or longer to learn English. I think that this is more indicative of some parents' feeling that English is the key to success though and that their kids need to get their English skills, even if it means separation from their immediate family. There is also a teacher at my school who lives alone because his family moved to the States 7 years ago (wife and 2 kids) to learn English and decided to stay. He supports them with his job here and visits on vacations. He is reluctant to move to America because he thinks he won't be able to support them there. And of course the weekend families...

In some cases, I can see that it's just a different way of looking at things--a lot of it having to do with education and having a good job, but I can't imagine anyone just giving up their children forever.

[mokpochica]

[Cedar]

There are entire orphanages full of nothing but kids whose parents gave them up, voluntarily, at an age too late for them to be able to luck into an adoptive family. Koreans are very reticent about adoption, the law limits the number of babies that can be adopted abroad, so everyone except the tinies ends up living in an orphanage. But most of the orphanages turn them out when they finish high school.... the staff changes often, the volunteers change often, and the kids are moved from house to house, even to different cities. The whole time these kids are aware that mom or dad or both or at least grandma is off there... not taking care of them, doing as they wish. It makes my blood curdle. Do you know there are siblings, even sometimes three together in these places faced with the daily reality of knowing that their parents divorced and neither party wanted the burden of children when starting their new life? It really makes me sick!

On a different note, some rich parents actually have their high schoolers live in a separate house or apartment in order to remove distractions, the mother comes, cooks, cleans, and goes home leaving sonny to study.

[ulsanchris]

i've heard of stuff like this before. Not just in korea but in several different places around the world. My korean girlfriend tutored a girl whose parents were divorced. as far as I remember the girl was with her grandparents while the parents lived alone. My girlfriend didn't think much of this arrangement. She thought the mom should look after the daughter. So I don't think the practice of having relatives or others raising one's children is culturally acceptable here.
In the Cook Islands it is common and acceptable to pass off children to relatives. When I was there I saw several cases of this.
Not to mention that it was common not too long ago in the west to send children off to relatives if parents were unable to care for them.
I think we must also ask ourselves how many people do we know back home who were raised by grangparents or other relatives for various reasons. Also how many parents who both work send their children to daycare when they don't have to.
I knew this one girl who went to an international school in London where she had her own flat and basically lived by herself eventhough she was only 16 or 17.
Not to mention I had a friend whose mother ran off to australia to marry some guy there and left her son to live with his paternal father whose, then, wife hated my friend. My friend didn't stay there long. He lived with me and my family for a bit and eventually went on welfare and lived on his own. by the way he is one screwed up guy.
The case of parents sending off their children is not isolated to Korea. Unfortunately it is a practice that is widespread around the world

[Corporal]

Panthermodern and Ulsanchris:

I was not trying to suggest that this is a problem solely limited to Korea.

I just found it a sad situation, that's all, (the fact that this little child has two parents perfectly capable of looking after him, but they choose not to) and wanted to comment. It was not a "Korea is worse than the rest of the world" post.