Conservative gov`t and violent crime

Seoul educational superintendent Kwak No-hyun said on his Twitter account Wednesday, “In the U.S., the rates of murder and suicide increase if conservative forces take power. Those who will not die if the Democratic United Party takes power are either murdered or kill themselves.” He said he cited part of an article by Ha Ji-hyun, a medical professor at Konkuk University, carried in the Korea Education Daily on Monday to encourage the people to vote. Kwak, however, came under fire for violating political neutrality by implying that voters should not choose conservative parties in the parliamentary elections Wednesday.

Such a claim is based on the book “Why Some Politicians are More Dangerous than Others?” by James Gilligan, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School. Gilligan studied violent deaths including suicides and homicides that occurred over the past 107 years from 1900. He found that suicides and homicides soared after the Republican Party candidate was elected president. Under a Republican administration, the number of those who killed themselves or were murdered was 114,000 more than that under a Democratic government.

On the reason for the rise in violent tendency, Gilligan said the policies and strategies of a specific party encourage violence and cause social inequality to increase. Unemployment was the phenomenon he paid attention to. The thought of abandonment arouses humiliation and can lead to suicide if directed toward oneself and murder if directed toward others. The U.S. system in which people value reputation and the social safety net has been weakened due to growing unemployment and this apparently has created such a phenomenon. Whether Gilligan’s theory can be applied to Korea, however, remains unclear.

Korea’s suicide rate began soaring in the wake of the 1997-98 currency crisis. In 1992, 3,533 people in Korea killed themselves, but the figure shot up to 8,569 in 1998 and 15,566 in 2010, giving the country the dishonor of having the highest suicide rate in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. By contrast, the homicide rate has slightly grown since the global financial crisis regardless of the government’s ideological inclination, according to police statistics. A 20-year study conducted by Lee Cheol-hee and other Seoul National University professors said the suicide rate grew when employment increased. In this sense, the claim that “people will die if conservatives take power” is a serious distortion. How unfortunate that Seoul residents have an educational superintendent who frequently stirs controversy with reckless comments.

Editorial Writer Chung Sung-hee (shchung@donga.com)