Scottie wrote:Ultrasound. It's been a while since I've visited Korea but, damn, abortion is commonplace there. China, too. Parents are only "supposed" to have one child. Pregnant women have ultrasound tests not simply to determine the health of the child but to identify its sex. If it's female? Heavy chance it will be aborted.degenerasian wrote:I guess my original point was that abortion is illegal in these countries. Not because of religion but because of stigma? The rate in Korea of Childbirth to abortion is 55-45. In 2011 450000 kids were born and 350000 fetus' aborted. That's astonishing.
You're absolutely right about the aspect of the culture that is historic and ingrained. Boys have always been prized and girls are a disappointment. I've seen women bawling their eyes out at temples because their child was a girl; asking G-d to forgive them for having a daughter, swearing to G-d that they'll give up eating red meat, they'll pray a dozen times every day, they'll do anything possible if only G-d will grant them a son, to avoid failing as a woman, to avoid her husband being ashamed that his seed was not strong enough to sow a son. My best friend in Korea, with whom I still remain close, is the director of internal medicine at one of the largest hospitals in South Korea. And this man of science, of medicine, was hell bent on his child being a boy. He was frankly obsessed with this. And even though he was a complete atheist, when his wife became pregnant, he'd go to Buddhist temples twice every day, visit fortune tellers and necromancers, employ any superstition imaginable, to "help" her child be born male. When his wife gave birth to a daughter, I congratulated him. He wept. His friends didn't congratulate him; they expressed their regret and offered condolences. So heavy does it weigh on their minds and stature. (Oddly, he named her "Chee-Wun", after a brand of Soju.)
What resulted in that country is that the number of the newest generation of Korean males has heavily outweighed the number of females. So in a typical schoolroom, you'll see about twenty boys and a dozen girls. This will get intriguing when they reach marriage age. There will be a tremendous number of unmarried men compared to women; the women will dominate the selection process (you can see that now in their pop culture). What will the men do? Aside from moving to Canada, that is. Gay culture is going to be huge in Korea; it's burgeoning already, although culturally taboo, ultimately inevitable. Of course the upside is that for gay males it will be a Golden Age.
Imagine if abortion was legal there. There would be no girls born.
Men indeed lose status if they have a girl. I've seen entire wills and fortunes that go t0 the family with the grandson, not the grand-daughter.Ask your friend, he probably lost a fortune.
