I wanted to post about this before I went on holiday, but I never got a chance. One day, as I was preparing dinner, Lime turned to me and informed me that I shouldn’t be buying dumplings anymore, not for a while anyway.
What the hell was she talking about? She explained that what was supposed to be going into dumplings—mainly meat fillings, apparently—had been replaced by rotten Chinese vegetables which were supposed to have been disposed of in the trash. Bear in mind that in Korea, Chinese food products are considered to be (and may well be) lower than low quality.
Well, now I’ve got a link over at the Korea Times (update 10 Aug. 2014: yep, more English-language Korean news down the memory hole, but here’s a selection of links), and it’s complete with a suicide!
With public outcry over the recent food scandal still simmering, police on Monday continued their search for the body of a food manufacturer who jumped into the Han River after being criticized for making dumplings out of spoiled radish scraps.
The 35 year-old owner of Vision Foods, identified only by the last name Shin, was presumed dead after a witness saw him plunge into the Han River from Panpo Bridge at around 8:50 p.m. on Sunday, police said. However, his body has yet to be discovered.
There’s more, so go check out that article. Seems the ROK has very little concern for food safety, fining these bastards lightly, and even letting some of them continue operations uninterrupted for paying a bigger fine.
And as for the suicide of Mr. Shin, I think one less piece of exploitative, hateful, profiteering, dishonest, corrupted shit will not be missed. But I would like to note how very annoying it is, this idea that his suicide amends anything. All it does is create a spectacle, a pitiful spectacle. Koreans still will remember that this man and his family fed them garbage, or one would hope so anyway. It’s the epitome of falsely apologetic ineffectiveness that one encounters in every business situation in this country, in my experience, and I, for one, do not feel sorry for Mr. Shin at all. I’m not glad he’s dead, though. That’s far too easy an out for the son of a bitch.
If he’d been a real man, he’d have admitted his faults, and lived to pay for them. Wait, scratch that: if he’d been a real man he would not have happily fed his countrymen garbage for a little more profit.
The sick mindset that Lime so often complains of, I see so clearly now. Greed vs. the soul? The soul never seems to win enough battles.
Well, at least you have this all spelled out in front of you. The issue is not more complex that this: fucking your fellow humans for a few dollars means you are garbage, worse garbage than the garbage you sell them. Don’t do it. Be a part of the small segment of the world that is decent, for whom there is no question of what is right in a situation like this.
Don’t be a loser like this Shin idiot. Be a real human being.