Archangel357 said:
...
First, Koreans do not subscribe to the same notions of individual liberty as Europeans, let alone Americans. Theirs is a history of collectivism and public service. Therefore, people are far more likely to accept legislation because it is the law. Koreans barely jaywalk, for crying out loud, and drug use among adolescents is minimal (which may explain this particular addiction).
This hardly precludes others from viewing and criticising it based in their own set of values. I was never a fan of ethical relativism, and consequently value the individual liberty of each human even when they - or some of them, for there will always be exceptions - do not do so themselves. A small minority is bound to value their individual liberties, and my thoughts are with them, just as they would be with minorities such as the gay community (t)here, who are also the only ones to truly value the ability to sleep with the same sex unpunished.
Majority dictatorship does not become any more justifiable just because the majority is larger and have a long history of being the majority.
I am the first one to agree with the notion that passing unenforceable laws erodes authority - in OUR societies. In a country where Confucianism is very much alive and you address your elders with honorifics, it's a different story. Not to mention that with such attitudes towards authority v individualism, privacy laws there are rather different than they are here. I'm no expert on the Korean legal system, but I wouldn't be surprised if this actually COULD be enforced.
Which sounds exceedingly horrible and authoritarian to me; and probably to a fair few of the younger Koreans whom it affects as well.
Next, education is EVERYTHING in Korea. For centuries, Korea has been a meritocracy - your education level determines your entire life. So yeah, something that keeps kids from learning, to Koreans, may very well be as bad or worse than giving them otherwise legal intoxicating substances is considered in America, for one. Bavarian fathers take their sons to the pub when they're 12, and Italians let their 10 year old daughters drink diluted wine at the dinner table. Again: values are hardly ever universal. What appears shocking to Americans may be normal somewhere else, and what is no big deal to Americans may be considered offensive in another country.
No values are not universal,
nor do they stay the same for each generation. It is quite clear that if the youth of Korea prefer to sometimes relax with an MMO, then their view on education - and possibly authority - is obviously not as rigid as that of their elders; Yet it is they who are oppressed by it and forced into it.
Thus we shift from the notion of an entirely united population all voluntarily rallying around its old culture, to one demographic forcing it down the throat of another with different priorities; In a way they should certainly have no right to in my book, at least not outside the immediate parent/child relationship.
Third, apples and oranges. There isn't an endemic addiction to late-night movie watching in Korea which is causing kids' grades to plummet and fucking up the general education level.
Not now, but something's going to replace the video games, and I'm guessing it's not going to be sleep or studying (unless the parents step in and say so, but if they had that kind of priority, authority, and spine, then a law would never have been drafted up in the first place).
