Korea needs 'psychological' social safety net

By Choi Sung-jin

Hardly a day passes without some incidental violence or impulsive slaying making headlines in Korea. The entire nation seems to be boiling with rage for one reason or another.

A man in his 50s in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, killed a coworker recently. “I got upset because he tried to talk down to me although we were not so intimate,” he told the police. A teenager hit a 20-something woman with a brick in an apartment elevator in Daejeon, last month after he had a quarrel with a school junior.

In February, an owner of a snack house in Seoul killed a customer who grumbled about the taste of his food, stabbing the customer no fewer than 33 times. In April, a citizen threw acid at four police officers, saying they had handled his case improperly.

According to the Korean Medical Society of Mental Health, a majority of Korean adults have problems controlling their rage, requiring anger-control training. Particularly, one in 10 belongs to the high-risk group needing serious treatment. The Health Assurance Review and Assessment Service also said the number of patients with impulse control disorders rose from 3,720 in 2009 to 5,000 in 2013, recording a 32.6-percent rise in five years.

Last year, there were about 150,000 crimes of violence that occurred accidentally, accounting for 40 percent of the total number of violent crimes. Also, about 70 percent of “don’t-ask crimes” occur in a fit of rage, according to statistics. More seriously, these hate crimes are not committed by people with mental disorders or who are psychopaths with little emphatic abilities but by ordinary people who just could not control their momentary anger.

Given the statistics that a majority of Korean adults have difficulties suppressing their anger, few can tell who will become perpetrators or who will not, experts say.

Hate crimes also occur often because of anger-control disorders, which are part of impulse control disorders in psychological terms. These mental disorders are common among people who are convinced they are receiving unfair treatment in society. When self-preserving emotions, such as values, desires and beliefs are denied, people experience stress, and when they keep enduring this stress, there come moments when they cannot control their impulses and then attack others, according to experts.

“Anger explodes when people feel they are being ignored or treated as if they are worthless by others,” said psychologist Frank Minirth. “In a society of unlimited competition and an environment where one easily gets the sense of relative deprivation, the sufferings from an inferiority complex get more out of hand and can explode all at once.”

That Korea has accomplished the fastest economic growth in the world but its quality of life is almost at the bottom suggests much, the experts said.

Korea’s life satisfaction ranks at 27th place out of 34 OECD member nations and its welfare and working hour indexes are also close to last. With respect to suicide rate, the nation has long been at the top, maintaining a large gap even with the runners-up.

The experts forecast that Koreans’ anger will subside if and when various social structure problems improve and their satisfaction with life goes up. However, the nation needs to manage anger-control disorders as mental illnesses and enhance the treatment system, until then.

“When life gets tough, many people harbor overwhelming feelings. If they fail to resolve their mental pressures every once in a while, they tend to explode when triggered by specific factors,” said Jeon Dae-yang, chairman of Korea Association of Criminal Psychology. “It is vital, therefore, for the nation to establish a psychological social safety net.”