Korea Teen School Sex
Olympia Brackin
Sook Yeong Park, 42, is suspected of bringing a boy and his older sister to the United States in 2010 when they were 9 and 11 years old, then confiscated their passports and moving with them to a home on 196th Street near Northern Boulevard in Flushing, cutting off communication with their parents, District Attorney Richard Brown said.
Park forced the girl, now 16, to clean the house after school and sometimes kept her home from school to do so, prosecutors said. She also demanded hours-long massages, manicures and pedicures, beating the teen when displeased by the results, the DA said.
After they were notified, assistant principal Annette Palomino noticed the girl had bruises and she had grown concerned about the girl's frequent absences. She also saw fresh wounds on her head and legs stemming from an attack last Monday and Tuesday, authorities said.
"According to the charges, the defendant cut off all contact between the two young victims and their parents in Korea, held them hostage in her home by seizing their passports, forced them to do household chores well into the night and to work outside of the home, and turn over all their earnings to her," Brown said.
The teens were able to speak to their mother in Korea last week for the first time in three years, the DA said. They are currently with a social worker, the DA said. It's unclear whether they will stay in the U.S. or be returned to Korea.
To us, North Korea, the country itself and its people seem pure and unadulterated. In South Korea, we are always stressed out because of our schoolwork, and also because everyone around is aware that we're from the North.
After living in South Korea for two years, Kim said she still had trouble understanding some words and expressions used in the South, while her biggest challenges were studying English and mathematics.
According to Chun Jeong Soon, a North Korean defector who resumed her job as a math teacher in the South, North Korean youths need about three years to adapt to life in South Korea, and after that they become very similar to their peers.
According to a 2006 study conducted by the Korean Institute of Criminal Justice Policy, about 47 percent of 210 North Korean defectors interviewed were experiencing difficulties adapting to life in South Korea.
Only one out of 10 respondents reported no difficulties at all. One of the difficulties encountered was language, with two out of 10 respondents having experienced some difficulty understanding the South Korean dialect.
Another study by the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights in 2005 used a sample of 460 North Korean teenagers. Only one out of four respondents had a regular job. The rest had an insecure employment status, as irregular workers or day-laborers.
Original reporting in Korean by Jung Min Noh, Jinseo Lee, Si Chun ,and Wonhee Lee. RFA Korean service director: Jaehoon Ahn. Translated and researched by Grigore Scarlatoiu. Written and produced for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie and edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.
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In most cases, their only exercise comes in the form of two or three hours a week of physical education at school, without any additional sporting activities after their classes. By an international standard, the data show South Korean teens to rank among the most sedentary with their daily routine.
Early this year, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) released the findings of its 2021 national sport participation survey. The results showed 55% of teenage respondents answering that they exercised at least once a week for 30 minutes or more.
A 2020 research report by the Council of School Physical Education Promotion found that elementary and middle school students had gained an average of 4 to 5 kilograms during the pandemic, while their daily physical activity had declined by anywhere from 25 to 70 minutes.
In the case of South Korean middle and high school students, a 2021 youth health practices survey showed just 30% engaging in high-intensity exercise at least three days a week of last year, and only 14.6% exercising 60 minutes or more five days a week.
The polling data from South Korean education nonprofit Asunaro surveyed 6,261 students of all ages and revealed South Korean students are constantly stressed about keeping up with schoolwork and competition from their peers, Yonhap reported.Advertisement
South Korean high school students also averaged less than six hours of sleep per night, and 41.3 percent said they felt obligated to stay up past 10 p.m. to do homework.Related
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The study habits among South Korean teens begin early, according to the survey. About 86 percent of elementary school students receive private lessons after classes, as do about 76 percent of middle school students. But the system is taking a toll on young South Koreans: 86 percent of high school students said they are stressed because of school, and 72.8 percent said they feel guilty if they take a break.
Carolyn Walworth, 17, often reaches a breaking point around 11 p.m., when she collapses in tears. For 10 minutes or so, she just sits at her desk and cries, overwhelmed by unrelenting school demands. She is desperately tired and longs for sleep. But she knows she must move through it, because more assignments in physics, calculus or French await her. She finally crawls into bed around midnight or 12:30 a.m.
Yet when they enter their high school years, they find themselves at schools that typically start the day at a relatively early hour. So their time for sleep is compressed, and many are jolted out of bed before they are physically or mentally ready. In the process, they not only lose precious hours of rest, but their natural rhythm is disrupted, as they are being robbed of the dream-rich, rapid-eye-movement stage of sleep, some of the deepest, most productive sleep time, said pediatric sleep specialist Rafael Pelayo, MD, with the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic.
On a sunny June afternoon, Dement maneuvered his golf cart, nicknamed the Sleep and Dreams Shuttle, through the Stanford University campus to Jerry House, a sprawling, Mediterranean-style dormitory where he and his colleagues conducted some of the early, seminal work on sleep, including teen sleep.
Beginning in 1975, the researchers recruited a few dozen local youngsters between the ages of 10 and 12 who were willing to participate in a unique sleep camp. During the day, the young volunteers would play volleyball in the backyard, which faces a now-barren Lake Lagunita, all the while sporting a nest of electrodes on their heads.
At night, they dozed in a dorm while researchers in a nearby room monitored their brain waves on 6-foot electroencephalogram machines, old-fashioned polygraphs that spit out wave patterns of their sleep.
Moreover, the researchers made a number of other key observations that would plant the seed for what is now accepted dogma in the sleep field. For one, they noticed that when older adolescents were restricted to just five hours of sleep a night, they would become progressively sleepier during the course of the week. The loss was cumulative, accounting for what is now commonly known as sleep debt.
Teens are also biologically disposed to a later sleep time because of a shift in the system that governs the natural sleep-wake cycle. Among older teens, the push to fall asleep builds more slowly during the day, signaling them to be more alert in the evening.
While teens are biologically programmed to stay up late, many social and cultural forces further limit their time for sleep. For one, the pressure on teens to succeed is intense, and they must compete with a growing number of peers for college slots that have largely remained constant. In high-achieving communities like Palo Alto, that translates into students who are overwhelmed by additional homework for Advanced Placement classes, outside activities such as sports or social service projects, and in some cases, part-time jobs, as well as peer, parental and community pressures to excel.
According to the 2011 sleep poll, by the time U.S. students reach their senior year in high school, they are sleeping an average of 6.9 hours a night, down from an average of 8.4 hours in the sixth grade. The poll included teens from across the country from diverse ethnic backgrounds.
Many studies show students who sleep less suffer academically, as chronic sleep loss impairs the ability to remember, concentrate, think abstractly and solve problems. In one of many studies on sleep and academic performance, Carskadon and her colleagues surveyed 3,000 high school students and found that those with higher grades reported sleeping more, going to bed earlier on school nights and sleeping in less on weekends than students who had lower grades.
Where she once had good sleep habits, she had drifted into an unhealthy pattern of staying up late, sometimes until 3 a.m., researching and writing papers for her AP European history class and prepping for tests.
The experience was a kind of wake-up call, as she recognized the need to return to a more balanced life and a better sleep pattern, she said. But for some teens, this toxic mix of sleep deprivation, stress and anxiety, together with other external pressures, can tip their thinking toward dire solutions.
Research has shown that sleep problems among adolescents are a major risk factor for suicidal thoughts and death by suicide, which ranks as the third-leading cause of fatalities among 15- to 24-year-olds. And this link between sleep and suicidal thoughts remains strong, independent of whether the teen is depressed or has drug and alcohol issues, according to some studies.
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