Friday, March 14, 2008

Murder Suicide

The recent murder/suicide involving a once famous baseball player here is on every news channel. Heinous crimes are rare here in Korea. I've read some recently like the one involving the disappearance of women; considered heinous because the killer/suspect has not been apprehended yet despite years of police work.
Anyways, back to the first topic.. there's a lot of speculations on why the crime took place. Most news channels are investigating the financial side of it. What's interesting to me is the reaction of the Korean people as a whole.
A comparison would be helpful to understand what I'm saying here:
I watch TV Patrol on the web everyday. And I am amazed at the contents. People killing people for no apparent reason, deaths caused by accidents and the never-ending idiocy in the Philippine government. Korean news consists mostly of government issues mostly bribery scandals. Then there's weather, traffic/accident, more economic issues, education; like what programs would be more beneficial etc. I've often asked why there are no crimes (even petty ones) reported. The answer given was that even if there were crimes committed, most never make it to the evening news. It's like crimes are just petty and thus filtered or just that people are more interested in the nations economy.
So when a once famous baseball player killed 4 women (mother and 3 daughters) and then commit suicide later when the police identified him as the suspect, the news/documentary channels are on their third day trying to analyze what went wrong. Most reactions I saw/heard were more of shock than disgust. One reaction that I heard more than once was "he killed for money?" implying that 170 million won (roughly 150 thousand dollars) isn't a reason for murder.
Pinoys see murder/death on the news and they shrug it off. Happens everyday, that is. We're still disgusted by most of it but unlike Koreans (shock and disgust) our reactions are that of someone who are predisposed to seeing it on the news everyday.

No comments: