[ad_1]
In case you or somebody you recognize is having ideas of self-harm, please search assist instantly. Yow will discover assets in South Korea right here or seek for helplines in different international locations right here.
From his first look on TV in 2001, Lee Solar-kyun captivated audiences together with his mellow tone and avuncular smile. He strode genres, his filmography spanning from heart-wrenching dramas to nail-biting thrillers. He obtained worldwide fame and popularity of his starring position in “Parasite,” an acerbic satire on South Korea’s crippling inequality that received Finest Image on the 2020 Oscars 2020, changing into the primary non-English movie to take action. Extra just lately, he was nominated for greatest actor on the 2022 Worldwide Emmy Awards for his appearing within the sci-fi collection “Dr. Mind.”
Hearts sank worldwide, due to this fact, when Lee was discovered useless on December 27 in a parked automotive in central Seoul. He died from an obvious suicide on the age of 48. Earlier than his demise, Lee was beneath police investigation for allegedly taking unlawful medicine.
Discourse surrounding his demise stays superficial, particularly for these residing outdoors of South Korea. Rightly, movie aficionados all over the world are in shock, and can proceed to be so. Everybody deplores such a tragic lack of nice expertise. And people who learn a bit extra discover out that Lee was the newest physique depend in South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s “conflict on medicine.” However there’s extra to it.
Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist, posited that every suicide isn’t an remoted, particular person affair, however slightly a manifestation and consequence of a given society’s “collective tendencies” or “collective passions.” A person is without delay a participant in a society and a sufferer of the society’s social mores and tidings. What Durkheim outlined as “fatalistic” suicide entails circumstances the place people are subjected to such insufferable psychic strain that they envision no higher future.
This idea could be utilized to “social homicide,” which refers to deaths and suicides engendered by social methods and establishments that go away struggling people no different alternative however to finish their lives. Though students generally invoke this time period when discussing financial insurance policies that disregard the socially weak, or reckless insurance policies that exacerbate local weather change, Lee’s suicide suits this mould.
So, what did South Korea do to Lee – and all others stigmatized as drug customers?
South Korean society as a complete – the general public, the media, and social establishments – pilloried and socially buried Lee. First off, the police leaked its inner investigation of Lee to the press in October 2023. South Korea’s legal regulation prohibits publishing data on a suspected crime earlier than official prices are filed. That is to stop undue public consideration and stigmatization of the suspect, particularly with the chance in thoughts that inner investigation could discover inadequate proof and the case could possibly be dropped. But, the police and the media have flouted this precept most of the time.
Unfounded rumor and hypothesis ran wild. The police and the media have been in lockstep, and the gang cheered them on. Folks began expressing their disappointment. They referred to as Lee a hypocrite, a “drug legal” hiding behind the masks of a smiley dad. They pried open Lee’s non-public life and spied on his household. Dailies of all stripes and social media channels picked him aside. Even nationwide broadcasts jumped on the bandwagon.
The elementary precept of “harmless till confirmed responsible” was only a doormat. Retailers eliminated Lee’s posters from their store home windows. Corporations Lee had endorsed have been already contemplating suing him for harming their model picture. Movie studios have been debating whether or not his new movies ought to even be launched.
They didn’t care that Lee examined unfavourable in a number of drug assessments. They didn’t care he was the sufferer of blackmail. (Lee admitted to the police that one time he consumed a substance supplied by considered one of his acquaintances with out pondering it may have been an unlawful drug. One other of his acquaintances threatened to reveal this incident to the general public, demanding cash in change for silence.)
Regardless of some examples of his questionable night-time recreation, his case would have probably been dropped given the unfavourable drug assessments. Your entire mess didn’t warrant Lee’s spoil; even when he was a drug consumer, this could have been the trigger for pity and serving to fingers.
Reasonably, Lee was pelted. The general public already held a trial of their thoughts and condemned him to demise.
South Koreans have an intense aversion to unlawful medicine. Drug abusers are branded and banished, with no probability of redemption. The press trailed Lee in every single place, as in the event that they have been reporting on the top of his profession and his life. Society confirmed him a bleak future, and it turned a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In tandem with the general public’s antipathy to drug abusers, or these suspected of utilizing medicine, are the federal government’s insurance policies and judiciary and medical methods. Particularly focusing on Lee, the Korea Communications Fee, the federal government company that screens broadcast contents, expressed its willingness “to ban drug criminals from showing on TV.”
The phrasing adopted by each the general public and authorities lies on the core of the issue: Individuals who take medicine are regarded and described as criminals, as a substitute of sufferers requiring social and medical rehabilitation. As soon as labeled as criminals, they have to be swiftly plucked out of society and carted off to jail.
In 2022, President Yoon created a drug-busting task-force made up of 840 specialists. He additionally greater than doubled the price range to battle drug-related crimes. They rounded up greater than 20,000 individuals in 2023, a two-fold improve from the years earlier than Yoon’s time period.
It’s vital to find the supply of drug trafficking and eradicate turf wars, however the majority of these being arrested are simply customers affected by dependancy. But, in 2022 as an example, the Prosecutor’s Workplace consigned solely 14 circumstances to medical remedy. This illustrates the diploma to which regulation enforcement is bent on figuring out and prosecuting substance customers, as a substitute of providing alternatives for remedy and social rehabilitation.
Below a social framework that views substance dependancy as primarily against the law, not a medical situation requiring remedy, the logic is that the extra addicts the police carry to “justice,” the higher. The heavier the punishment, the extra righteous they really feel. They’re perpetuating the misunderstanding that the society is changing into cleaner, when in actual fact, for the previous 5 years, about 50 % of drug customers ended up in court docket once more.
In the meantime, the Yoon administration slashed the price range for medical remedy of substance dependancy by 85 %. Hospitals treating addicts have needed to shutter their companies as a result of lack of presidency funding. And what little funding stays is for consulting, not skilled remedy, and consciousness campaigns.
Public humiliation dismantled in a day the 20 years of Lee’s legacy. The police grilled him for 19 hours, in a single day. He confronted whole social ostracization and stigma. Lee informed his spouse in his suicide notice that “there’s no different alternative.”
If a pathway had been laid out for society to embrace him, supply him correct medical care, and welcome the resumption of his profession, Lee would have nonetheless been with us. Each sufferer of dependancy deserves the prospect Lee was by no means given.
[ad_2]
Source link
