Seoul Neighborhood a Hot Spot for Cram Schools and Study Drugs
Considering the extremely competitive nature of high school education in South Korea it is no surprise that various drugs are sought after to gain an advantage:
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| A banner in Daechi-dong, Seoul, reads: “Do not drink ‘strange beverages’ handed out to students.” (Choi Jae-hee / The Korea Herald) |
On April 3, an appalling scam targeting unsuspecting students on the streets of this neighborhood sent shockwaves across the nation. Over 100 bottles of drinks laced with methamphetamines and ecstasy were distributed, falsely marketed as study aids to enhance concentration and memory.
The scammers even tried to blackmail some of the victims’ parents, threatening to report their children to the authorities for drug use unless they paid up.
Putting aside the audacity of their act, it raises questions: Why did they choose to target Daechi-dong among all the other neighborhoods in Seoul?
The drug-infused drinks were labeled as “Mega ADHD” and handed out to teenage passersby, just like in a street promotional event.
Perhaps what made the young victims less suspicious was that in Daechi-dong, study aids such as prescription medications for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, caffeine pills and energy drinks are widely used.
Some parents spoke of falsifying symptoms to get access to ADHD prescription drugs, believing they will enhance academic performance. The substance methylphenidate in ADHD medicine can help takers stay awake, energetic and focused.
“Some students are particularly vulnerable to stress before important exams and get easily distracted. Those who have maintained great academic performance would not want to spoil things due to temporary stress, so they resort to taking prescription stimulants,” said Huh, a housewife in her 50s residing in Daechi-dong who has a 17-year-old daughter.
“It is an expedient, but not illegal,” she said, explaining that some parents and students pretend to have or exaggerate ADHD when seeing a doctor.
Data shows the number of teenagers on ADHD pills has been on the rise.
Korea Herald
You can read more at the link.
Sadly, the lie that a college degree is a golden ticket, combined with numerical constraints on getting a degree in Korea, lead parents and students both to adopt bad habits.
Plumbers probably make more money and end up with their own business, many employees, and a greater retirement package than most chaebol employees with college degrees.
But humans are, and will always be, gullible.
There was a time when a college degree was difficult enough to earn that it showed an employer that you were trainable.
Now, it is extended high school… and maybe worse because there is a profit motive on top of the administative motive to give away graduations.
A STEM degree is still worth something… as long as nobody bites on the idea that math is racist becasue 1 + 1 can’t be 3 if you are black.
Medical school seems to have gone off the deep end with race quotas and gynecology for mentally ill men dressed as women.
Note to self: Only white and Asian doctors, thank you. Black doctors used to be at least as qualified as white doctors and maybe more-so if they had to fight racism. (I was delivered by a black doctor who my parents spoke highly of.) But now, with quotas and other “equity” compensations, who knows.
My advice:
– Get trained in a skill AI cannot do. That leaves fewer and fewer options every month.
– Get skillsets and a talent stack. A talent stack is a group of skillsets that work together so you can do things few other people can. This makes you a valuable employee.
– Face the fact that AI is your coworker. If you have your own secret AI, you will be a superstar. You can run and train ~ChatGPT 3.5++ at home for less than $20,000. You can train it with specific information that augments your talent stack. Work with it to analyze situations and solve problems.
– if that sounds too hard, practice “Would you like fries with that?” So you can have a job until approximately next year.
The power of a college degree isn’t how economical it is, but how socially prestigious it is. Sure, a plumber may make more bank than a starving post doctorate academic. Even make millions if the plumber has a mind for business and creates a small company, but at the end of the day the plumber is a “dirty blue collard worker” who is serving others with his hands.
Better to be a poorly paid academic than have the shame of working on toilets. To be a man who’s job is to tell others what to do and more powerfully what to think. In essence better to be a priest. It has always been this way in Korea but also Europe and the rest of the world. Before universities bestowed social prestige, it was the priestly orders. Priestly order which in fact created the university system in the first place.
On the contrary of being gullible, people chasing social prestige are really chasing power because regimes dictate what social prestige is. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion would not exist without regime power. Power potentially converts into money… a whole lot of other people’s money if one manages to climb the social ladder high enough. That is highly rational. A “free” lunch is more energy efficient than an earned lunch. A diversity officer/community organizer/HR manager only needs to hold their hand out and say the right words for money to be fearfully given it. An engineer must actually create something that works and is materially useful. That is hard, very hard.
This is why AI will (likely) not destroy the non-STEM college degree. Also why STEM degrees will continue to include required classes in feminism/transgenderism/socialism/diversity/etc etc. Those degrees and requirements are not tied to economic value but linked to power. So long as regimes have a need for people that say the ‘right’ things and report the wrong think, college degrees and their absurd requirements will continue to exist in abundance.
Regimes can’t replace state apparatchik (really just warm bodies analogous to boots on the ground) with AI robots. People are funny. They won’t willingly invite government surveillance camera’s into their own home, but will happily send their children to woke universities for them to return indoctrinated. Kids who will then record the “problematic” family thanksgiving dinner to cancel some uncle on tiktok for saying something like what ChickenHead says.
Grayblack, it takes about one hour and $300.00 in parts to change out a toilet.
The cheapest labor fee I have found in DFW is $199. One popular company charges $500.
Prestige? Yeah, there’s a big price for that. And the tradesmen cry about power all the way to the bank.
And while the white collar guys are getting their noses rubbed in stuff, the tradesmen go on strike if they’re disrespected.
Power? Yeah. It no longer comes from a college degree. And ChatGPT won’t unclog a drain, fix the heater/air conditioner, or replace a water pump in your fancy new foreign car…
We were all misled.
“Also why STEM degrees will continue to include required classes in feminism/transgenderism/socialism/diversity/etc etc.’
Hard times create strong men.
Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men.
Weak men create the times that are just beginning…
…where luxury values are burned away by increasing poverty… and nobody cares about the attention-seeking complaints of trannies or angry fat women or criminal black lives… where fake global warming and fake pandemic restrictions are ignored… where socialism works because we all take a shift shooting hoodrats that have strayed into the neighborhood… where diversity is accepted because anybody who works hard and is a team player is welcome regardless of skin color or gender identification (real or imagined).
Those yelling about equality are going to get it.
The scam has been exposed and it will take 5 years or so… but people are getting wise to the idea a feminism class doesnt pay the bills… even if you are required to take it.
Capitalism is going to work and somebody is going to come up with the clever idea of offering a real education.
And that will set a new standard.
“You got your degree in 2020? Cool. We will call you.”
(Files the resume with those who have Iron Curtain business degrees and those who graduated from Caribbean medical schools.)