Comment by southernplaces7
9 days ago
Not the same country but another example of a culturally similar attitude towards shame over failure: In Japan in 1985, Flight 123, a massive Boeing 747 carrying 524 people, lost control shortly after takeoff from Tokyo en route to Osaka.
The plane's aft pressure bulkhead catastrophically exploded, causing total decompression at the high altitude, severing all four of the massive plane's hydraulic stabilizer systems and entirely tearing away its vertical stabilizer.
With these the 747 basically became uncontrollable and minutes later, despite tremendously heroic efforts by the pilots to turn back and crash land it with some modicum of survivability for themselves and the passengers, the flight slammed into a mountain close to Tokyo, killing hundreds.
The resulting investigation showed that the failed bulkhead had burst open due to faulty repair welding several years before. The two technicians most responsible for clearing that particular shoddy repair both committed suicide soon after the crash tragedy. One of them even left a note specifically stating "With my death I atone". (paraphrasing from memory here)
I can't even begin to imagine a modern Boeing executive or senior staffer doing the same.
Same couldn't be said for Japanese military officials after the tragedy though, so who knows about cultural tendencies:
Right after the crash, helicopters were making ready to fly to the scene (it was night by this point) and a nearby U.S military helicopter squadron also even offered to fly in immediately. The local JSDF administration however stood all these requests down until the following morning, on the claim that such a tremendous crash must not have left anyone alive, so why hurry?
As it turned out, quite a number of people had incredibly survived, and slowly died during the night from exposure to cold and their wounds, according to testimony from the four who did survive to be rescued, and doctors who later conducted postmortems on the bodies.
Happened more recently too https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/south-korean-ex-...
Interesting case too, and that he committed suicide despite not really being blamed from what I just read.
On the other hand you have cases like the MV Wewol ferry disaster, also in South Korea, in which well over 250 passengers died horribly. Most of them were just kids, high school students on a trip. The causes leading up to the tragedy, the accident management by the crew itself and the subsequent rescue, body retrieval and investigation, were absolutely riddled with negligence, incompetence, bad management and all kinds of blame shifting.
The owner of the ferry company itself had an arrest warrant issued for him, then fled and only later was found in a field dead and presumed to have committed suicide.
Underlying all this is that even these apparent cultural ideas of committing suicide to atone for the shame of some gigantic mistake don't seem to prevent people from actually making these kinds of mistakes or doing things more responsibly in the first place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_MV_Sewol
What an incredible story. Thanks for sharing.
Obligatory long form link: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/fire-on-the-mountain-the...
Wish I'd thought to include it myself!