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The leading French daily Le Monde on Tuesday mused on the implications for French society of the so-called ¡°freezer babies¡± case, where two dead infants were found killed by their French mother in the freezer of her Seoul home. Columnist Laurent Greilsamer laments how French society and its media ¡°cast scornful glances¡± on experts from Seoul who conducted the first, and as it turned out accurate, DNA test on the babies.
The writer lists the many unanswered questions surrounding the freezer babies, but said more interesting than Veronique Courjault, the culprit, was how people around the Courjaults ignored the signs for several years. The reason, Greilsamer concludes, why her husband, family, neighbors and colleague did not notice her three pregnancies and her killings of the babies is that ¡°¡®we did not want to see.¡±
¡°There are also scornful glances. For several months, we have cast them in the direction of South Korea. We, too, did not want to see. We, too, did not want to understand what the experts in Seoul said, explained and proved to us. Who is ¡®we¡¯? It encompasses the police, justice, lawyers, the media and what is called public opinion,¡± he wrote.
¡°After the ¡®freezer babies¡¯ case emerged in Seoul in July, we behaved as if South Korea, the world¡¯s twelfth-largest economy, were a dictatorship that fabricates evidence to take foreign nationals hostage,¡± the writer said. ¡°It took our own DNA test for us to accept the evidence from Seoul as it is¡¦ Clearly, we did not want the Courjault couple involved in the case. We, too, were blind.¡±
The Seoul correspondent of the center-left daily Liberation said in an article titled ¡°Freezer Babies: Shocked Koreans¡± that the case is changing how Koreans view France.
The daily reported negative sentiment against France, which was seen as ¡°arrogant¡± in treating the case. A Korean mother named Kim You-mi (36) with a nine-year-old son told the paper, ¡°It was proven pretty quickly that Courjault was the father of the babies. Korean investigators carried out a scientifically accurate probe of the case. But France denounced us as having manipulated the case. If France does not accept its mistake, it is because many French are still racists and colonialists. France is arrogant and negative toward Korea.¡±
The daily also quoted a Slovak woman married to a French expatriate in Korea as saying, ¡°France was a paradise of perfumes, fashion and cheese in the eyes of Koreans, a place of dreams and fantasies.¡± Now, she said, many French people here ¡°are pretty embarrassed.¡±
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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