Is the crackdown on Seoul’s elderly hooligans the right way to go?

For a long time now, as reported in this newspaper last week, residents of the central Jongno district in Seoul have had to put up with teenage misbehavior by septuagenarians and octogenarians in the city’s historic Tapgol Park.

Finally, this summer, officials said enough was enough and put up signs around the park announcing a total ban on activities that are associated with delinquent behavior.

These include janggi and baduk. For the benefit of foreign readers, these are deceptively benign board games that nevertheless incite the passions.

Janggi is like chess except that people are wont to shout and slap their thighs when they play. The objective is to checkmate your opponent’s general, which may explain the disrespect for authority.

Baduk players are more subtle troublemakers. They take turns placing circular black and white stones on a grid, trying to mark out more territory than their opponent. This goes on in the open air where women and children might be walking by.

Some of the more loutish pensioners even drink and smoke, activities that not only cause climate change and are linked to the hotter summers we’ve been experiencing in recent years, but which also smell. These activities, too, have been banned. Thanks to the Jongno District Office, Tapgol Park is now smoke and alcohol free.

The park, which faces the main street near the Nagwon Instrument Arcade, has roots going back to before most of us were born. During the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), there was a Buddhist temple on the site. The park itself opened in 1897. It is most famous as the place where the organizers of the March 1 movement against Japanese rule read the independence declaration that launched a nationwide outcry for freedom in 1919.

Retired people have been gathering at the park for decades. You can also see them in the streets and alleys nearby, where there are soup kitchens and barbershops that cut hair for just 5,000 won. Come rain or shine, there are usually hundreds of people there, escaping loneliness and the creeping conviction that there’s no longer any point in things. At Tapgol Park, they can make friends and put the world to rights without being oppressed by working-age people and youngsters.

But in recent years, people who live nearby have been complaining about misbehavior. As reported in this newspaper, police received 1,470 calls last year alleging that people were drinking. urinating or generally making too much noise. There were also cases of disorderly conduct, vandalism and even violence.

This has apparently got so bad that young people, who are dedicating themselves to the national economy, give the park a wide berth, particularly at night.

The question now is whether the measures taken are sufficient to curb antisocial behavior. Or do they not go far enough? Would it not be better to round old people up, put uniforms on them and make them do calisthenics, some people ask?

Is the crackdown itself worrying evidence of agism? Are we unfairly victimizing the elderly just because some of them behave like kids?

These questions are not going to go away any time soon, as Korea is now a “hyper-aged” society with more than one in five of citizens being over 65.

Korea is facing challenges related to this on several fronts. One is poverty: The elderly poverty rate here is almost 40 percent, much higher than the OECD average of 14.2 percent.

Perhaps taking the cigarette out of an old person’s mouth and confiscating their janggi board is neither kind nor effective. Perhaps compulsory etiquette classes and a return to spanking might work better.

Michael Breen (mike.breen@insightcomms.com) is the author of "The New Koreans.” The views expressed here are his own.