A Korean Mother's Report
Mass Circumcisions at Schools
In the past, more than a couple decades ago from now, some schools would have mass circumcisions of multiple boys. Circumcision rate in Korea was higher in the past, and mass circumcisions at schools were thought to be promoting public health by ensuring that multiple boys get the cut at no or little cost to their parents. Schools in Korea still do things like mass vaccinations or mass blood tests of the students, but no longer the mass circ. I don’t know how this may sound like in other countries, but Korea is such a collectivist country, and it was even more so in the past.
I personally didn’t attend a school that did mass circs when I was a schoolgirl, but I heard of the experience from my friends. They say that the boys were lined up to be cut at the medical room inside the school, all of them with faces like they were about to enter the gas chamber. I can see how mass circs at schools would promote public health, but I think it would have also been an interesting site to see. Oh, those poor nervous boys!
Circ and Coming of Age
Because the circs in Korea happen at later ages than in the US where most circs are done on newborns, circ has a meaning of coming of age in Korea. Many boys in Korea get the cut in later elementary school years or early middle school years, roughly coinciding with the start of adolescence. As a mother of two boys, I’ve heard from other moms that some of their boys want to be circumcised sooner so that their penis would look like a grown-up’s penis than a boy’s.
Also, because the boys getting the cut in Korea tend to be much older than newborns, the circ is viewed a little differently. For instance, the boys of the applicable age would sometimes talk about circs and ask how it was if a friend of them recently got the cut. They wonder whether it hurt and was it embarrassing to be naked in front of the female nurses, etc. When I was a kid, I remember some boys saying that one of them in their clique recently got the cut. I didn’t quite know what they were talking about back then, but I remember the mood of the boys sinking a little. It was most likely because of the boys still with their foreskins getting a little nervous about their impending fate, to be cut like their friend. (Now, I find it rather cute when the boys talk about circs in a worried tone.)
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