Who's To Be Blamed?

A Korean senior high school student killed his mother for he was apprehensive that he might be scolded by his mother and even treated him cruelly because of a low academic performance he had in his report card, the news said.

The Korean Herald reported that an 18-year old senior high school student of Seoul National University's School of Law cut his mother's throat with a kitchen knife in March for being "afraid of the severe punishment" which his mother might inflict on him when she knew that he was making a false report of his grades.

This young man whose name was undisclosed had developed a tantrum and became apprehensive and even defensive to fight back his mother's cruelty and strictness over his consistent poor academic performance.

He knew that his 51-year old mother expected him to be outstanding in his class. She didn't want him to fail her. Thus, she resorted to violence and other means of torturing him as a form of discipline.

As a result, this student had been forging his report card since middle school and he ranked 62nd academically among the nation's top 4,000 students, the police authorities said. Police also found that his self-graded scores of the College Scholastic Ability Test earlier in the month put him in similar outstanding ranking.

For such too-much and irrational discipline by his mother, he became criminally-inclined and killed his mother. Then he left his mother dead body in a sealed room door in their apartment for 8 months. Until it was found out lately by his estranged father who got back home after 5 years of "walking out on the family" when he smelled something bad emanating from the closed door of their apartment. And he reported the incident to Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency which arrested the young man.

Yes, who's to be blamed?