A student, Park (25), visited Grand Canyon, Arizona, the United States, before returning to Korea after finishing his studies in Canada last December. He went on a group tour and had an accident of falling down from a cliff around South Point Yabapi Point, Mother Point. He had a rib fracture and cerebral hemorrhage, which is a type of bleeding that occurs inside the skull. As a result, Park was taken to a nearby Flagstaff Medical Center for surgery. Unfortunately, he was in the state of unconsciousness. To make things worse, he was unable to return to Korea due to an expensive medical cost of approximately 200 million won. After the incident was publicized to the media, people started to sign the petition of helping Park return to Korea. However, I think this is one of the personal matters, so the help of the government for him is not necessary.
First of all, Park’s situation is very sad, but this incident is merely a personal accident of a person. In detail, he is responsible for his own act because according to the articles, he was taking selfies in a dangerous cliff when he should have been more cautious. Due to these reasons, I believe it would be hard to help him at the national level of funding 200 million won. If the government steps in this matter, it would indicate helping his family with the taxes. Rather than helping those personal incidents, it is better to help poor family who barely makes a living. All in all, I do not think it is necessary to help a person who is financially wealthy enough to study abroad in Canada.
I doubt whether this is a serious incident to get on the petition. I think it is not right to make an opinion based only on emotion and harshly judge people who oppose to the petition as lacking empathy. Even if Park’s present situation is unfortunate, it is true that he is responsible for the accident. This petition demonstrates how irrational the society could be when the accident appeals emotionally to the public, disregarding other factors like how much tax would be wasted and how come his family cannot afford to pay all of the expenses. In a nutshell, I believe helping Park for his personal matters with our tax is out of question and thus, should not be permitted.