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An elderly stalker

Posted April. 09, 2014 00:42,   

한국어

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” Gatsby cannot give up his first love Daisy. His first love Daisy gets married to a rich man while he was away for war. To win his lover back, he does anything that he can do to make money, and finally gets a luxurious house that overlooks Daisy’s house. The life of Gatsby who gives up everything for love is the crystal of romance and purity.

Miss Gong believes “Little strokes fell great oaks.” One day, she finds her Mr. Right. She obtains his datebook and shows up everywhere he goes. She gets into trouble when he learns that she intentionally appeared to him. Eventually, she wins love. This is the plot of “Oh! Happy Day (2003)” and the lead actress is performed by Jang Nara as a “cute stalker.”

The reality is different to a novel or a movie. A person’s excessive obsession over someone who does not like the person often leads to a creepy stalking crime. Recently, a student who sent some 100,000 text messages and KakaoTalk messages such as “I’ll throw hydrochloric acid into your face” to a female student who rejected him for two months. Stalking does not happen only among young people. In Japan, an 85-year-old man bullied a 79-year-old woman, saying, “I’ll kill you if you don’t meet me,” and he was eventually arrested by police. The “elderly stalker” was the husband of a female patient who used the same hospital room with the old lady five years ago. One-sided affection and love turn into a scary obsession, and a nice gentleman into a dreadful assailant.

Japan’s National Police Agency said 9.1 percent of 21,089 stalking offences in Japan last year were committed by those aged 60 years or over. Tomomi Fujiwara, an author who studied the crime committed by the elderly, says, “The violence of the elderly is the scream of solitude, alienation and isolation.” Aging Korea is no exception. It is sad that the desire of human beings does not easily disappear when they get old.

Editorial Writer Koh Mi-seok (mskoh119@donga.com)