Korean Birth Rate

The Eyes of Priest column in the Catholic Peace Weekly reports on an unwed couple who has made known the birth of their child. 

The news of a Korean actor and model having a baby was surprising. On the 22nd, the child's mother, a model, announced the baby's birth through her social media. The father confirmed through his agency that he is the child's biological father. He stated that although there are no plans for marriage, he will fulfill his responsibilities as a parent to raise the child.

The columnist congratulates the father and mother on their decision to raise the child. He appreciates the courage of the two of them to choose life over abortion, even though it could tarnish the image that they have built up so far. 

A child, God’s creation “just by existing,” brings joy and love to the world. He applauds the father for taking full responsibility for their child until the end. He prays that God will bless the couple and the child born.

The priest columnist is disappointed at some of the public’s evaluation of this unmarried birth. Some entertainment media and YouTubers are pouring out gossip articles about inheritance or child support. They are also forcibly linking this incident to the mother's volunteer work and using sarcasm against her. All the words poured out on them feel like stones thrown at the woman in the Gospel of John. 

If they treat famous celebrities this harshly, how much worse must it be for ordinary people who gave birth alone to protect their lives? Unfortunately, our community’s atmosphere makes people choose abortion because of the opinions of others. I hope you put aside your curiosity and pray for this child.

However, he is concerned that voices are calling for various family structures because of this incident. They say that our society’s traditional view of family through marriage is outdated. The younger generation is responding positively to the unmarried birth. The government is exploiting this atmosphere and promoting policies to diversify family structures. The birth rate is continuously falling, so they are trying to increase it this way. The National Assembly is discussing a bill that would recognize unmarried ‘couples’ and same-sex ‘groups’ as family status, like European countries like France.

However, the birth rate cannot be solved this way. As Tesla's Elon Musk recently pointed out, Korea's birth rate is falling due to structural problems in our society. The fundamental reasons for the low birth rate are long working hours compared to OECD countries, pyramid-based education as seen in the medical school entrance exam craze, materialism that believes money is the most important, and our politics that cannot solve this problem. Therefore, rather than the diversity of family composition, we need to change the reality that children face to increase the birth rate.

The Catholic Church supports all those who protect life. Like Mary's conception and Joseph's courage 2,000 years ago, I pray that the Lord's grace will be abundant for all who seek to protect life.

Companion Dogs In Korean Society?

In her Catholic Peace Newspaper column, a religious sister examines the era of 10 million companion dog households in Korea.

The New York Times recently highlighted Korea's companion dog culture under the title: 'The lonely country of Korea adopts dogs as life companions'. Korea has a declining birth rate, an increasing number of singles and childless people, and a country that used to eat dogs but now accepts dogs as children or grandchildren and treats them as family members who cherish them as life partners.

The New York Times uploaded a video of a funeral for a companion dog, similar to a human funeral, and even mentioned other specific cases in detail. The owner wears an old $38 padded jacket while putting his dog in a new $150 jacket, and while he eats old food from the refrigerator, he feeds his dog fresh chicken breast. It is reported that the pet economy is growing as dog strollers sell better than baby strollers in Korea, and the number of dog daycares, trainers, clothing, funeral homes, and groomers is increasing. The newspaper reports that dogs in Korea today are family members needing care.

The word 'responsible' is related to self-identity. People feel psychologically stable when their inner self and external behavior are consistent when they acknowledge their true nature and desires as they are, and when they pursue authenticity. However, when they act 'inappropriately,' they feel psychological discomfort in a state of cognitive dissonance. Therefore, they think the greatest happiness is when their 'self' is acknowledged, when they build relationships based on their own self, and when they love and are loved.

Dogs also feel secure when they love and are loved like dogs. There is a tendency to treat dogs excessively like humans by giving them human characteristics or anthropomorphizing them. Animals live and exist in their own way. However, there are cases where dogs are dressed in clothes that can be uncomfortable and painful or used excessively with cosmetics or accessories. She wonders if they are using their companion dogs as tools to show off their image to others while ignoring the physical discomfort of dogs.

Humans should be loved while loving like humans, and dogs should be loved and loved like dogs. Humans and dogs are clearly different. Kant defines humans as rational beings. They can set their own goals and make moral decisions and judgments. Therefore, loving humans like humans means respecting the other person's freedom and choices while relating to them based on mutual respect and consideration.

However, dogs are sensitive and faithful to their instincts. Loving dogs like dogs means respecting their instinctive needs and nature. Humans are born as immature babies and grow into independent adults who can take care of others. In the process, they share emotional bonds and become interdependent, growing and maturing. However, dogs are like children who need care from the beginning until death.

However, humans expect dogs to act as emotional partners for humans and try to gain psychological satisfaction by treating them like mature people. It would not be a proper way to care for dogs if we project our complex emotional needs onto dogs to get emotional rewards, make dogs behave the way humans want them to, or have excessive expectations that dogs love and understand us.

Dogs cannot become people, so why do we try to 'anthropomorphize' them?  We should consider whether we are overly relying on companion dogs to relieve the fatigue, emotional deprivation, and loneliness from human relationships and trying to get emotional compensation.

<Spiritual Questions>

Wives and husbands are called 'companions.' Dogs have also become relatively high in status as they are called 'companion dogs'. Companion dogs have become part of the human family. Sometimes, the degree of obsession is greater than that of family. Questions such as "Please baptize my companion dog," "Please pray for my companion dog's healing," "Please hold a funeral for my companion dog at church," and "Will I be able to meet my dog ​​again in heaven?" are now a reality that we can no longer ignore. Just like people, we hold funerals and keep the remains of our companion dogs at home, remembering and praying for them.

However, excessive obsession with companion dogs can quickly become a substitute for religious and emotional salvation. Do you feel like the time you spend walking your dog at a particular time every day is a sacred act? Do you find emotional stability in the daily ritual of uploading pictures of your dog to SNS and writing a walking journal? Does the anthropomorphization of dogs, treating them like people, make you love them more?

Heart to Heart

Both Catholic Newspapers published articles at the end of the 16th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which concluded its long journey with a closing Mass on October 27. 

The 355 synod delegates with voting rights approved the final document by voting on each item on the 26th and submitted it to the Pope. The Pope decided not to write a follow-up recommendation for the synod but to release it immediately, as the document already contains “very specific guidelines” that will guide the Church's mission. It is a message to the church of a desire to walk together.

The motto of the Synod on Synodality is “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission” —“journeying together”.

Last year, Pope Francis, in the 57th Communication Sunday statement, commented on speaking with the heart: "It is the heart that moves us towards an open and welcoming way of communicating." This is the way to walk together.

"Communications, I want to focus on 'speaking with the heart'. It is the heart that spurred us to go, to see and to listen, and it is the heart that moves us towards an open and welcoming way of communicating. Once we have practiced listening, which demands waiting and patience, as well as foregoing the assertion of our point of view in a prejudicial way, we can enter into the dynamic of dialogue and sharing, precisely that of communicating cordially (formed with the word for heart in Latin).  After listening to the other with a pure heart, we can also speak following the truth in love (cf. Eph 4:15). 

The Pope, in his Statement last year, mentions how St. Francis de Sales, the Bishop of Geneva, in one of his most famous statements, "heart speaks to heart," inspired generations of faithful, among them Saint John Henry Newman, who chose it as his motto—Cor ad cor loquitur— (speak heart to heart). One of his convictions was: "To speak well, it is enough to love well." 

At the end of his statement last year, the pope said it is terrifying to hear how easily words turn into warlike actions of violence. All belligerent rhetoric must be rejected, as must every form of propaganda manipulating the truth for ideological ends. What must be promoted is a form of communication that helps create the conditions for resolving controversies between people.

Last year also marked the centenary of St. Francis de Sales, who was proclaimed patron of Catholic journalists. We will never know how much influence the 'mass media' has on the world's citizens, but we all know it is not small. Toward the end of his message, the Pope expresses hope that people who work in mass media seek and speak the truth with courage and freedom and reject the temptation to use sensational and combative expressions.

Knocking On the Door of Our Hearts

The Catholic Peace Weekly's  Precious Faith Column gives the readers some thoughts on an essential aspect of life.

We remember the dark times of the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing. Wasn't it even more complicated when the Mass times were canceled? However, social distancing also helped us in reverse. When the Earth stopped, the natural ecosystem came back to life. It was an opportunity to confirm how much humans have tormented the environment.

Social distancing also gave us much to consider in our interpersonal relationships. Wearing masks and keeping our distance, we realized that we had been too close, that we had been too involved in each other's lives, and that we had been treating each other based on our wishes. How much hurt had we caused each other, and how we had been shrinking from the pain and avoiding relationships? Human relationships require an appropriate amount of distance. That distance has the creative power to reflect on relationships and move toward better ones.

From this perspective, the story of the fall of humanity is very interesting. In the beginning, God created man and woman and allowed them to eat fruit from all the trees in the garden. Still, he strongly warned them not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (see Genesis 2:17). However, man was deceived by the serpent and ended up eating the fruit. This incident, which the church calls "original sin," also contains wisdom and experience about human existence and life. There are lines in human life that must not be crossed and things that must not be done, and when ignored, we are hurt, and society suffers. If we apply this to human relationships, it would be a message to never touch the noble personality and freedom of the other person but to keep a distance and respect and care for them.

Just as an appropriate distance is necessary for human relationships, keeping a distance from one's life also enriches life. Daily prayers, Masses, retreats, etc., are small but significant moments where we keep a distance from ourselves. Distancing ourselves becomes a creative time to stay with the Lord, and it gives us the wisdom and courage to overcome our old emotions, wounds, and painful moments and to stand up anew.

At this point, how about thinking about 'God's distancing'? Through the incarnation, God came to us, overcoming the infinite distance. He did not just come to us but became a human being just like us and lived among us. However, He still needs to completely eliminate the distance. It was to allow humans to freely walk toward Him so that love and friendship could sprout, grow, and bear fruit.

When the angel Gabriel visited Mary, the first thing he said to her was 'greeting' (Luke 1:28-29). God respects human freedom and personality, so He does not pressure or force. He greets and waits for humans to respond on their own.

Jesus was the same. He did not force but approached people and became their friends and neighbors. He listened to their life stories, shared with them the pains and sufferings, the joys and ecstasies of life, and reached out to them, hoping they would take courage and stand up and walk with him. "Come and see" (Jn 1:39). These words were an invitation to the communion of love that he shared with the Father, an invitation to a new love.

Jesus comes to us today and knocks quietly on the door of our hearts. Suppose we can break away from our daily lives and distance ourselves from our emotions and disturbances. In that case, we will encounter the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, who caresses and comforts our souls. We will be sensitive to the internal movements within us that have longed and waited for the Spirit.

"Live Each as if the Last"

A science teacher in the Catholic Peace Weekly gives readers some thoughts during this month, when we think of and pray for the dead, having just celebrated All Souls Day.

On February 22, 2023, the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) observed a comet that appeared. It was first discovered on January 9 at the Zijinshan Observatory in China and was named ‘C/2023 A3 Zijinshan-Atlas’. It approached Earth at 70 km per second and will be observed in the western sky after sunset from October 12 to the end of this year. 

A comet is a celestial body with a core of ice and rock and a tail of gas and dust. It is formed in the Oort cloud outside the solar system. The comet has an orbital period of 86,600 years, so Paleolithic people were probably the first to see it in the night sky.

ATLAS is an early warning system developed by NASA to notify people of expected major damage from celestial bodies from space and to prepare for evacuation in advance. The Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute also operates a system to track and monitor these dangerous celestial bodies.  Comets, asteroids, and meteorites can cause large-scale damage to life on Earth, and about 2,200 of them currently have this potential.

There is a strong theory that the extinction of the dinosaurs, that ruled the Earth 65 million years ago, was due to a meteorite impact with a diameter of about 10 km, which had a power more than 1 million times that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. During geological history, there have been five mass extinctions on Earth. When Halley's Comet, which had a tail full of poisonous gas, approached the Earth in 1910, some Europeans committed suicide out of fear, while others squandered all their fortunes. Fortunately, there is no possibility of a comet passing by the Earth this time and colliding with the Earth.

Let's think about the rise and fall of all life forms and civilizations that lived on Earth during the 80,000 years that the comet passed from the solar system's edge. Compared to that long time, how fleeting is the human life span of less than 100 years? In that short time, material desires, pleasures, and success are nothing but vanity compared to the sublime and eternal values.

All living beings are given only a finite amount of time in space and time of the universe. We all live a limited life, and we know this well. We just don’t know the last day of our lives. That’s why the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, a Stoic philosopher, wrote in his autobiographical record of reflection, Meditations— “Live each day as if it were your last. Don’t be anxious. Don’t become numb. This is the perfection of character.”

If my life were to end tomorrow suddenly due to a celestial body that threatens the Earth or an unexpected accident like a traffic accident, how should I live today? Perhaps I would regret not smiling a little brighter today or not giving a little more of myself for the betterment of the world. We must live today so we will not have any regrets even if we die tomorrow. Because we all will die someday. So we must live well right now. “So stay awake, for you do not know the day or the hour.” (Matthew 25:13)

Harm Done by Deepfake Technology

The Catholic Times' View from the Ark column explains deepfake photography, which involves applying modern technology to images without the consent of the people portrayed. A university professor shares her thoughts on this very serious issue.

This year's deepfake sexual violence incident in a prestigious university group chat room was shocking. Deepfake is a video created by synthesizing faces and body parts using AI technology and producing sexual violence victims. According to a report by the National Police Agency, 474 cases of deepfake sexual exploitation material production and distribution were arrested in 2024, and more than 80% of the perpetrators were teenagers, including elementary school students.

Teenagers are not sexually ignorant, and they are not free from sexual violence. As digital natives, it is not difficult for them to access or produce sexually exploitative material. The perpetrator who produced and sold sexually exploitative material of female celebrities is a teenager, and the group chat room operator is said to have produced sexually exploitative material since high school. He receives an invitation from a friend, shares deepfake sexually exploitative material and produces sexually exploitative material through a production program.

Deepfake sexual violence shows the gendered phenomenon of male perpetrators/female victims. This is why we need to raise awareness of sexuality among children and adolescents and provide online and offline sexual violence prevention education and counseling. However, the backlash against feminism has led to the interpretation that even the issue of deepfake sexual violence is of little interest. 

There are also objections that the punishment hinders the development of AI technology or that men cannot give up their sexual pleasure. It is difficult to accept these counterarguments because they are related to the insensitivity to violence and lack of empathy, which prioritizes one’s own desires over others’ pain.

Perpetrators produce and distribute deepfake sexually exploitative material, understanding that they will not be punished. This process dilutes their sense of guilt, builds confidence, and strengthens the bond between perpetrators.

Since digital sexual violence is an exploitation of images, the persons mistakenly believe that they are not a problem because they do not commit physical sexual violence. However, victims have difficulty living their daily lives with their faces exposed and are suffering. Photos on social media are being deleted, and graduation albums are in danger of disappearing.

The 17th Women's Human Rights Film Festival held by the Korea Women's Hotline in September 2024 screened a documentary on deepfake sexual violence. In the film <My Blonde Girlfriend>, the victim posted a photo of herself in a dress from a few years ago on social media. They were victims of deepfake sexual violence because the photo was stolen. Also, in another incident, the main character goes to a restaurant with a friend, and her laptop is stolen. The perpetrators threatened to distribute the photos stored on the laptop as deepfake sexual exploitation material. In both films, the victims say: "That photo is not me," in a situation where the perpetrator has not been arrested, it is a courageous act for a victim to reveal their face. Still, it is heartbreaking because it is an inevitable choice.

Overseas media outlets report that Korea is a country that produces a lot of deepfake sexual exploitation material and that there are many female victims. Despite this stigma, it is not easy to arrest and punish the perpetrator because evidence disappears when the operator discontinues the chat room. Telegram, which had refused to cooperate with the police investigation to protect the privacy of its members, has agreed to delete illegal information using deepfake.

In October of this year, the government passed a bill that punishes the possession and viewing of deepfake sexual exploitation material, strengthened the prison sentence for deepfake sexual violence from 5 years to 7 years, and increased the prison sentence for blackmail using deepfake sexual exploitation material to 1 year or more. The Ministry of Education recognizes the seriousness of deepfake sexual violence and is planning violence prevention education after an on-site investigation.

The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family is interpreted as the main department for sexual violence. Still, the organization is operating at a reduced scale, and there is a lack of manpower and support. A more integrated measure is needed at the institutional level, and a change in awareness of deepfake sexual violence is required throughout society through education and campaigns.

Strenght from Weakness

The Catholic Peace Newspaper's 'Preciousness of Faith' column by a priest university professor gives readers another look at the Korean author who won the  Nobel Prize in Literature and her approach to facing the problems that arise in our lives. 

Author Han Kang, recently selected as the Nobel Prize in Literature winner, is receiving worldwide attention. The Swedish Academy introduced the author as “a powerful poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and exposes the fragility of human life.” Rather than dwelling on the violence and resulting wounds that we experience in our daily lives and the fragility of humans who cannot help but be hurt, she went beyond them. She found true humanity, which was recognized as a universal value.

In fact, the subject that author Han addressed is something we all experience daily, and it is also an important subject dealt with in faith. Although we usually do not realize it, the prayers in the latter half of the Lord’s Prayer are filled with content about human fragility. Humans are frail beings who cannot survive without daily bread, who sin and hurt each other, and who cannot help but fall into temptation and evil. The Lord’s Prayer is a prayer that asks God the Father to feed us, forgive us, and protect us from temptation and evil.

The columnist read a poem by author Han called “It’s Okay” and deeply sympathized with it. One day, when her newborn baby cried every night and didn’t know what to do, she suddenly said to herself: “It’s okay." Since then, the baby has stopped crying, and she learned the wisdom of comforting herself by saying, “It’s okay,” instead of “What’s wrong?” when she’s having a hard time.

In this way, the author conveys a positive view of human fragility, comforts those hurt by fragility, and seeks humanity's embrace and support of fragility.

Fragility permeates all dimensions of humanity. Faith, hope, and love are indispensable virtues in human life that make humans human, but they are also filled with human fragility. Because they permeate human fragility, our faith is unstable, our love leaves many wounds and tears, and our hope wavers in trials and crises.

However, if we realize that weakness is common to all and that we can only move forward through weakness that embraces and supports each other’s weaknesses, then we have lived well enough and can tell ourselves: “It’s okay.” When we do, we will be able to discover that faith, hope, and love are sprouting anew within us.

The Apostle Paul said that he would boast about his weaknesses if he wanted to boast (cf. 2 Cor 12:5-10). Because he experienced that God’s power is fully revealed in weakness. God gives grace to everyone, but he exerts greater power on those who know how to recognize and accept themselves as weak. As one writer said, we can say: “It’s okay,” and embrace our weaknesses, but believers go one step further. If we can meet the gaze of the Lord who knows our weakness and looks at us with compassionate eyes, and if we can hear His voice saying: “It’s okay,” we will realize that this is enough, and we will be able to approach others in that way. 

The God we believe in is a God of compassion, and he raises us up again and enables us to live. It’s okay! Some things cannot be done, fixed, or undone in life.  But let’s not be disappointed. The Lord says it’s okay. If we can admit our weaknesses, then we can start again.

“Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin again.” (John 8:11)