"Yank yank... Why is he strapped into this thing?" It was 2004, and my Korean ex-mother-in-law was meeting her grandson for the first time. He was just a few weeks old, and I had flown to Korea with a car seat from Canada because, at the time, they weren't sold there. Clearly she had never seen one of these contraptions before and it dawned on me that she had no idea how it even worked.
The car seat quickly became a point of contention. Every time my son fussed or cried, my ex-mother-in-law would remove him from the seat, insisting he was "safer in her arms." She never asked, just acted, convinced that her embrace was the ultimate protection. I had to explain to her, multiple times, that in an accident, a baby in her arms would become a projectile—a missile shooting out of the window. He was far safer strapped into his car seat.
My hyper-awareness came from more than just maternal instinct. Living in Korea, I’d witnessed driving habits that shocked me. Korea, at the time, had one of the highest accident rates among OECD countries, and road safety was far from the priority it is today. I saw babies perched on laps in the driver's seat, toddlers held up to car windows to get a better view, kids with their heads sticking out of the sunroof, and children freely crawling around the backseat as if seatbelts didn’t exist.
In those days, it seemed like safety was the last thing on anyone’s mind in Korea. I found myself sarcastically muttering "Safety First!" while watching these alarming scenes unfold. The contrast with my own concerns couldn’t have been starker.
Fast forward to today, and thankfully, much has changed. Now, young parents in Korea are well aware of the importance of car seats, and they can be easily purchased online. But back then, convincing someone to use a car seat was a battle of cultural norms versus safety awareness.
This experience was just the beginning of a series of safety challenges I faced while raising my children in Korea. Stay tuned for more in the "Safety First Korea" series, where I’ll be diving into other topics such as helmet use, pedestrian safety, and more.
Change takes time, but awareness is always the first step.
