BEIJING: Man kills his circumciser

AFP via Znews
April 9, 2014

China circumcision patient held over doctor's murder: Media

Beijing: A Chinese man "dissatisfied" with his circumcision is suspected of killing a doctor at the hospital where the operation was carried out, state media reported Wednesday.

Wang Fangli, who underwent the surgical procedure last week, stabbed Shan Erhui to death in the doctors' lounge of a hospital in Fengxian county in the eastern province of Jiangsu on Tuesday, the official Xinhua news agency said.

It was not clear whether Shan was the doctor who performed the operation, or why Wang, 45, had it carried out. Circumcisions are not common in China.

"(He) was dissatisfied with the treatment outcome and the medical expenses," the report added.

Violence against medical staff in China has become increasingly common, with an average of one attack at hospitals every two weeks, state media said earlier this year.

The rise in violent incidents has been blamed on long waiting times and a perception that health care is expensive.

SOUTH KOREA: Circumcision rate declining

7th Space
December 12, 2012

Decline in male circumcision in South Korea

by DaiSik Kim, Sung-Ae Koo and Myung-Geol Pang

To investigate the changing circumcision rate in South Korea in the last decade and to propose underlying causes for this change, in the context of the present fluctuating world-wide trends in circumcision.

Methods: From 2009 to 2011, 3,296 South Korean males (or their parents) aged 0-64 years were asked about their circumcision status, their age at circumcision, and their information level regarding circumcision. We employed non-probability sampling considering the sensitive questions on the study theme.

Results: Currently the age-standardized circumcision rate for South Korean males aged 14-29 is found to be 75.8%.

In an earlier study performed in 2002, the rate for the same age group was 86.3%. Of particular interest, males aged 14-16 show a circumcision rate of 56.4%, while the same age group 10 years ago displayed a much higher percentage, at 88.4%.

In addition, the extraordinarily high circumcision rate of 95.2% found 10 years ago for the 17-19 age group is now reduced to 74.4%. Interestingly, of the circumcised males, the percentage circumcised in the last decade was only 25.2%; i.e., the majority of the currently circumcised males had undergone the operation prior to 2002, indicating that the actual change in the last decade is far greater.

Consistent with this conjecture, the 2002 survey showed that the majority of circumcised males (75.7%) had undergone the operation in the decade prior to that point. Focusing on the flagship age group of 14-16, this drop suggests that, considering the population structure of Korean males, approximately one million fewer circumcision operations have been performed in the last decade relative to the case of non-decline.

This decline is strongly correlated with the information available through internet, newspapers, lectures, books, and television: within the circumcised population, both the patients and their parents had less prior knowledge regarding circumcision, other than information obtained from person to person by oral communication. Within the uncircumcised population, the prior knowledge was far greater, suggesting that information discouraging circumcision played an important role.

Conclusion: South Korean male circumcision is likely to be undergoing a steep decline.

The cause for this decline seems to be the increase in information available on the pros and cons of circumcision.

[Boys in South Korea are commonly circumcised in late childhood or early puberty. They have input into the decision that babies do not - the reason, cynics say, that circumcision advocates press for the operation to be performed in infancy.]