A couple of years ago, my friend who works at a children’s hagwon told me an interesting story. She was in the middle of teaching a class when a middle school student came in late. Now, the fact that he was late was not strange, but the fact that he was squirming around in his chair and unable to sit still was. After several reprimands and attempts to make him focus, my friend finally got frustrated and said, ‘What IS your problem?!’ Her question was met by a chorus of giggles, but it wasn’t until another student pulled out a dictionary and showed her a word that she understood. ‘Circumcision.’ Not only had the parents decided to circumcise their tween-age son, but they had sent him back to hagwon directly after the fact. And because ‘education’ was so important to the parents, they had not even seen fit to stop by the house and allow their precious son to change out of his skinny jeans and into more comfortable attire.
Shocked by all the different components in this story, I asked Mr. Lee – my then boyfriend – why the parents had had their son circumcised at that age. I had been in Korea for 3 years and never heard about this. What this normal? Yes, he confirmed. And it is such a widespread practice that there were a lot of comedy skits about the experience. It was around the same age that he had been circumcised, and he was grateful for that because when he was in military service, the uncircumcised guys had to be circumcised at the beginning of their service and then return to their duties right away. I’m not sure if this was an actual rule at the time of his service, but when you combine Confucian culture + military culture, I think legality is a bit of a moot point. Social pressure and direct orders = the loss of foreskin it seems.
Well, this news shocked me to say the least because I had never heard of elective circumcisions at that age. For my part, I explained the practice of circumcision around the time of birth in Canada and unthinkingly said, ‘If you’re going to circumcise, I think it’s far better to do it when the child is an infant and cannot remember.’ Mr. Lee thought about it for a minute and said, ‘Yes, that is very reasonable. I think it is much better to circumcise an infant.’
Well, fast forward to the present, and suddenly this conversation is coming back to haunt me. Whereas I was a singleton believing that everyone should hypothetically do what was right for them at the time of that initial conversation, I am now about to be the mother of a son. And suddenly it really!!!!!! matters to me if someone goes at my kid with a knife when he is a newborn. You believe God commands you to circumcise your 8 day old? Go to it. You think it is essential for hygiene? Go to it. You think you need to protect your kid from AIDS? Sure…. But now suddenly it is my kid and my decision, and it is now very clear how I feel about my kid. Suddenly, nodding my head tactfully when others discuss their parenting choices has been replaced by a strong personal conviction that if my kid is to be cut, then he should be able to make that decision for himself.
Unfortunately, I seem to have made a rather compelling case to Mr. Lee all those years ago, and he is now completely convinced that circumcision at birth is the only reasonable decision. And unlike the ongoing debate of whether or not little Dragon should complete his Korean military service when he comes of age (a debate which always ends in both of us asserting in a rather uncertain way that there will be no need for military service in 20 years), this is an issue that needs to be resolved in the next 12-14 weeks.
This issue is nowhere near being resolved. It’s probably the only thing we really seriously disagree on when it comes to how to raise our kid (thus far). I’m hoping…because I don’t want this to turn into a massive fight…that this decision will have to be delayed because it is supposedly difficult to find a doctor here to perform infant circumcision because of the fact that tween/teen procedures are more usual. And, I’m hoping that our natural birth doctor will be opposed to what I now believe is a very unnatural procedure and that said doctor will find a way to rationalize against it in Korean in a more convincing case than I am able to make in English.
But oh silly me. Had I just kept my mouth shut all those years ago…had I just had a crystal ball that would have told me I was going to have a son…we would never have had this conversation until a time when Dragon was old enough to put up his own fight or give his own assent!
Update: Asadal Thought has a post up that explores circumcision in Korea in more depth.
If it were me, I would also argue for older, not younger, because, as you said, autonomy over one’s body, but also, infant penises must be very small, and if doctors aren’t accustomed to circumcising such small penises, there would seem to be greater opportunity for a tragic mistake.
I’m curious about the military service. How would he be able to avoid it?
Until recently, biracial/bicultural children that did not ‘look Korean’ didn’t have to do military service, but that law has changed. The purely hypothetical situation we imagine now is that we would not be living in Korea in 20 years and that he would give up his Korean citizenship. Of course, who really knows where we will be in 20 years, his/our feelings on citzenship based on where we are and what we are doing, and what the real requirements will be by that time.
How old is Mr. Lee? I only ask because my 37 year old husband came through military service intact (so to speak), and I had never heard about the need for snipping.
He’s 39 Diana. I’ve since heard from others too that it was common until the early 90s (when he did his service). Of course, again, I’m not sure if this was an official law or just a usual occurance. It has since been explained to me that ‘it was important for all soliders to look the same.’
Circumcision in Korea is a very interesting topic because so few people understand it. There’s a very good research article on it that was linked to on the Grand Narrative years ago, but I don’t know if it’s still there.
Basically, most Koreans consider it a feature of Korean culture to be circumcised, and it happens usually around the age of 11 or 12. This is, however, wrong. Circumcision is not at all something traditionally practiced in Korea. It only started when American troops were stationed in Korea after WW2. Noticing that a large number of American soldiers were circumcised, and because of popular beliefs regarding circumcision held in America at the time, the Korean doctors who were observing the US medics came to hold the impression that “advanced” and “developed” countries circumcised their men. This “knowledge” was clearly lacking in any understanding of why these men were circumcised in the first place – religious reasons or because many people at the time thought it was “cleaner”, or for the actual medical reason, which is an unretractable foreskin once puberty sets in.
This belief that circumcision is something advanced nations do was shown to still be present in the aforementioned article. Of the Korean doctors interviewed for it, the vast majority beleived that around 99% of Swedish men, Japanese men and American men were circumcised, whereas only a tiny number or North Korean and Chinese men were believed to be circumcised. this reveals that even the medical professionals carrying out the proceedure were under the impression that “rich” and “advanced” nations circumcised their men, whereas “poor” ccountries didn’t. This belief is of course entirely false – in Sweden, for example, I believe only around 3% of men are circumcised.
There’s more to it, and I mght actually write a post about it myself to cover it in more detail now that I’ve been reminded of it.
I think it’s a shame that it’s now considered appropriate and even “Korean” for men tobe circumcised here, where the reasoning is so… what’s the best word? Korea has a tendency towards the conservative in academia, religion andd so on, and that shows in the fact that Korean doctors have not changed their position on this since they first became aware of it in the 40s and 50s. What’s worse is that their opinions and beliefs on it are informed by false information, outdated beliefs and marred by the effects of a sort of cultural colonisation and a desire to be “advanced”.
And when the doctors themselves are in possessiion of so little accurate information, what hope for the rest of the population? And this is why kids who aren’t circumcised can end up being bullied by their peers.
One final thing to not from that research paper is this. There is a medical term which I forget to describe an unretractable foreskin (that is, when a man can’t pull back his foreskin after reachign puberty). If a young man is suffering from this then a doctor will eventually prescribe circumcision as the condition can result in a great deal of discomfort and can hinder certain functions of the adult penis. This research, however, showed that the majority of Korean doctors misunderstood the meaning of the term. they understood it to mean a foreskin which covered the whole head of the penis. As this goes for every male, these Korean doctors would prescribe for medical reasons circumcission in 100% of cases.
I fully agree that circumcision is not ‘traditional’ in the sense that it is a practice dating back hundreds of years in Korea. The problem is that ‘traditional’ often ends up meaning ‘what we’ve been doing for as long as most of us can remember, so it must be traditional because it is in our collective memory’ which I think happens in all cultures. And then in Korea you have the added ‘everyone else is doing it, so I have to do it, or I will be bullied/ostracized/not considered a proper Korean’ sort of mentality. So I understand why my husband thinks circumcision is important even though I do not agree with any of the rationales. However, in this case I would rather go with ‘his culture’ (as new a practice as it might be) rather than ‘my culture’ because I don’t trust doctors to perform infant circumcision when they are not used to it here, and because, quite honestly, I’d like to avoid having to make this decision until my son can make it for himself.
i agree with john. when in rome, dont ask roman doctors to do it the parisian way.
Any discussion on the mutilation of genitalia discomforts me, I had to stop reading after the fourth paragraph.
I think that trying to find a doctor to perform this on an infant in Korea will be difficult. You can perhaps use these points to your advantage:
1. Doctor’s here are reluctant to perform this on infants.
2. The few doctor’s who do perform it lack experience.
3. Having an inexperienced doctor remove a piece of your child’s delicate member may not be the best choice.
4. He can wait until he’s older and join his peer group in this “bonding” experience.
Then you have a good 10 years to come up with another reason or to allow your child to make his own decision!
My husband asked our Hypnobirthing instructor if she could recommend a doctor for circumcision. Her reaction helped to put it slightly out of his mind. But then the failure to find a doctor before birth combined with the euphoria of holding his son for the first time plus the thought of cutting that precious newborn meant we never looked into it and both our boys are intact.
IF they so choose, they can have it performed as adults like their father did, upon entering his military service. Of course we tend to believe they won’t have to perform military service as well, so who knows what will happen!
A Korean-American couple in our hypnobirthing class was asking about hospitals that circumcised babies last Saturday, and I was thinking ‘don’t hear this don’t hear this!’ (He didn’t!^^ God Bless the need to check your iPhone during break!!). But yeah, I hope that if it comes down to it that the fact that the doctors who do it here do not have experience with the procedure might make him think again. I still haven’t decided whether I should bring this point up and have an ‘adult chat’ or if I should do the Korean thing and avoid avoid avoid until we’re so busy and blurry eyed from night feedings that it never comes up again….
Whar became the deciding factor for us ( and please forgive any typos as I’m typing in a minuscule iPhone waiting for our German Internet to be installed) is that I simply couldn’t rationalize that the human infant was the only newborn species on the planet that required immediate surgical correction. It just didn’t make sense to cut off part of a baby because of societal norms- and so we didn’t.
Hello, I just found your blog and I’m looking forward to reading more. I never really thought about circumcision until I knew I was pregnant with a boy. When my son was born it seemed unthinkable to let my infant undergo non-necessary surgery. We decided to leave him as he was created; he can always decide for himself later. I have heard the argument that the son should look like the father, but this is absolutely not an issue for the child.
I’ve enjoyed your blog a few times, but really want to comment here. We didn’t cut our son, but weren’t very anti-circ either. I just was reading about intact/ cut issues last night and came across claims that the risk of death from circumcision is 0.02%. That is a very small number, but to me answers the question for good.
http://www.drmomma.org/2010/05/death-from-circumcision.html
There are also facebook pages called peaceful parenting and saving our sons that share a lot of information about genital mutilation.
I’m really interested to hear more about Korean culture and circumcision, Seamus Walsh. Our Korean doctor also tried to “correct” us, telling us that “Americans always circumcise.”
Hi Jessica! Thanks for the comment, link, and pages. Also, I am really loving the Korea Baby Network and affiliated doula-led web resources. It’s so great to see that there has been a recent explosion of support and services for natural birth, breastfeeding, and encouragement for English-speaking mums in Korea!
I’m glad you are enjoying the Korea Baby Network. Thanks for linking to it! It is exciting to see women help each other with pregnancy, birth and new babies here. This comes from a very personal need after having 2 children in Korea. I wanted a doula but it didn’t happen. The women who are banding together want every woman to have a doula if she wants one, and to KNOW that support is available here. If women don’t know their options, they don’t have any.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Global_Map_of_Male_Circumcision_Prevalence_at_Country_Level.png
Jessica, I’ve written a post about this subject now (rather hastily written and not one of my best) that’s linked to at the bottom of msleetobe’s post.
[...] recently read this post by msleetobe regarding circumcision in Korea. This got me thinking of an article I’d seen [...]
We never do circumcision in Russia, and I have never heard that any man had health problems because his foreskin wasn’t cut. Neither my father nor my brother (nor one of my male relatives) were cut, and no one of them has ever had health problem on the topic of hygiene. So those issues sound a kind of ridiculous for me. I think we have to stay the way God created us.