Suicide Notes

I've only been in Korea five months and already there have been two suicides that touched our lives in some way, fortunately very indirectly. Japan's propensity for it is well documented but it seems to be a new thing in Korea and I'm not sure anyone understands it yet.

Last night we were driving alongside the Han River and saw police, a fire engine and ambulance on the Panpo bridge, and several police boats in the water around it. There isn't any crime in Seoul so we naturally wondered what they were doing and came to the conclusion that it was a suicide. Reading the news this morning, it turns out that a dumpling company president had jumped off the bridge shortly before we drove past. He, along with several others, had been shamed by the recent exposure of poor hygene standards in the industry.

And just a week ago a local mayor outside Seoul was accused of taking a bribe from the Woonji Acadamy, a tax and accounting school in Insa-dong. The alledged bribe was said to be related to the building of a new branch of the school in Paju city, which was partly financed by the sale of the Insa-dong building to my father-in-law -- where Jungwon and I work in spare office space. The mayor committed suicide soon after the news broke, by the sound of the news report from the same spot of the same bridge.

This is one of the things that I still don't understand about Korea, the other being that weird electronic music that ajuma need to hear in order to have a good time.