re: #2 researchok

Not exactly.

‘Honor killings’ are unique to shame societies. Without a shame society there are no ‘honor killings’. The two are bound together.

We don’t live in a shame society- and Lee certainly knew that.

The exact same thing could be said of the Iranian guy who killed his family on Christmas morning.

Still, your point is nuanced.

He (Lee) may have responded in a way that reflected some of cultural upbringing. See Shame in Two Cultures: Implications for Evolutionary Approaches. It’s long but even a cursory scan touches the highlights.

See also Koreans and suicide for a more in depth look at Korea’s shame culture (they are not all the same).

This is another good article, Beware of the shame syndrome in Korea. It isn’t long but is worth a read.

Finally, Cultural Models of Shame and Guilt is pretty concise.

Thanks for the links. Looks like some fascinating reading. I have a couple of Korean friends, so I’ll have to read the articles and see what additional insight they might be able to provide.

A few months back I stumbled upon Chinese ghost marriage and was completely captivated by the utter foreignness (to me) of the entire concept. Turns out they have a form of it in Korea too, or so one of my friends informed me.

I’ll never cease to wonder at how wildly different human cultures can be, yet how similar we all are in many fundamental ways. It’s glorious and exhilarating and endlessly astonishing, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.