Korea's movements towards "perfection"

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I. Registration of Fingerprints

II. No place to hide

III. Wrongful movements towards “perfection”

IV. Conclusion

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I. Registration of Fingerprints

When you become eight-teen in Korea, you have to go to your district’s administrations office and register as a resident. On your registration, you have to hand in fingerprints of all your ten fingers. Actually, the officials who work at the administration office put special ink on fingers and makes copies of your fingerprints on sight. Thereafter, the Korean Government issues a certificate of resident registration to you. Once your fingerprints are taken, they are sent to the National Archive where prosecutors, police and NISI (National Institute of Scientific Investigation) have access to. Virtually, all Koreans who are adults have their fingerprints stored there. Therefore, if any form of crime takes place, securing the fingerprints at the crime scene is the top priority for investigation agents.

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II. No place to hide

Meanwhile, when it comes to the Korean Government’s traffic control, the situation is very different from New York. First of all, there are very few police men on the streets. However, if you speed or violate any kind of traffic regulation, it is certain that you are going to get a ticket. It’s because there are CCTVs everywhere. In case a traffic accident occurs, you do not have to raise your voice to make a statement favorable to you. All you need to do is to call up the police and report a car accident and request for a surveillance camera’s capture of the actual accident. Then each party’s insurance companies gather and watch the clip of the actual accident and discuss their client’s liability. Similar to the Upper East Side of New York, there is a district called “Kang-nam” which is renowned to being rich. In Korea, most people who are rich and have power live in this area. For instance, when you say you live in Kangnam, it highly implicates that you belong to the upper class of the Korean society. The reason for this is because, unlike New York, monthly housing payment was not a common thing in Korea for a long time. Traditionally, Koreans had to buy a house or rent one in a form called “jeonsea”, which is a system that you are renting the house for a long period of time, for about 2 years, by paying about 70% of the actual price. Therefore, if you live in Kangnam, it means that you own a house there which usually costs over USD 1.5 million, or you are living in a jeonsea which also coasts at least a million. Recently, this richest area installed CCTVs in every street and road of their district. So if a crime or a car accident occurs, it is obvious that you will be video recorded in this area. There was a residential vote for the proposal of setting up CCTVs in the whole Kangnam district. The proposal was passed almost unanimously. The residents of Kangnam are now satisfied with their low crime rate. They think the crime rate dramatically fell after installations of CCTVs. The district which I used to live in was also inspired by Kangnam’s “positive” performance and passed a proposal to install CCTVs all over the district, just like Kangnam. When I first heard that news, I felt good since I thought my neighborhood was going to be a “safer” place to live.

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III. Wrongful movements towards “perfection”

On April 23, 2010, Chosun Daily newspaper announced that 91% of Korean elementary, middle and high schools completed installing CCTVs in their schools. By the end of this year, the number will go up to 100%. The Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources is subsidizing schools to set up more cameras. They quoted a government official’s comments saying, “We are proud to say we are almost there where there is no inside-school violence. We strongly believe that the completion of installations of cameras will call an end to inside-school violence.” The Korean Government is very concerned about inside-school violence since violence among students is becoming more serious. Moreover, it is causing many more incidental student related problems, such as running away from homes, suicide, hate crime, to name a few. Therefore, the Korean Government decided to resolve these matters by resolving the inside-school violence. The resolution was simple. They decided to do what they do the best. They decided to put everything under surveillance. In the same context to this resolution, several years ago, the Korean Police started to set up CCTVs in public restrooms since they came to a conclusion that sex related crimes were mainly occurring there. The police insisted that they certainly were not going to set up cameras in an angle that they might be able to take pictures of the people while they use the restrooms. Many females protested against the installations saying that the police were taking inappropriate actions. They also alleged that the installation should come to a halt immediately. Because of the strong protest, the police backed up and removed all the cameras they installed. Even though this was an incident that happened years ago, it’s a perfect instance to explain how Koreans perceive privacy. When it comes to preventing crime, which is regarded to be a more important thing than protecting an individual’s privacy, many Koreans have a tendency to think that privacy is a thing that can be “ignored”.

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IV. Conclusion

Like the above, Koreans are, in general, insensitive about privacy. They do not care what kind of consequence sever monitoring can bring about. In Korea, there are already many areas where privacy has been neglected. In my opinion, the most common and easiest way to deprive Koreans of their own privacy is to ensure them that the privacy depriving actions are being taken to protect the safety of the public. When you say that, most Koreans are going to give up their privacy. This is unjust. Since many people think like this, Korea is moving towards a society which is being monitored more severely as time goes by. We have to realize privacy is something that can be easily taken away, but not easily given back.

(999 words)

-- KeeryongSong - 29 Apr 2010