DAEBU ISLAND, SOUTH KOREA — The rain pelting down on him in gray bullets, the teenager in tortoiseshell glasses stands in a muddy field and takes his punishment, well, like a boy.
Teeth clenched, lenses steamed, water streaming down his face, he looks ready to cry. His sneaker comes off in the muck and he reaches down to pick it up, losing step with the 70 other youths performing drills in rigid military formation.
"Are you feeling cold?" the drill instructor yells.
"No!" the boys respond.
"Are you sure you're not cold?"
"No, not at all!"
"Well, you sure look cold, let me make you sweat."
Their hair stringy, eyes downcast, they drag themselves zombie-like in pursuit of their instructor, the boy in the glasses last of all.
It's the summer camp from hell.
The Blue Dragon Marine Corps Training Camp is the brainchild of Park Kyung-hoon, a rock-hard 52-year-old former drill sergeant who sees the younger generation as a sorry lot: physically fragile, undisciplined and weak-minded, hunched over their computers playing video games, talking trash to their overworked parents.
But the moms and dads aren't blameless. They grew up during the lean years after the Korean War, and many overcompensate with their children, giving them everything they didn't have.
Finally, after years of such pampering, some parents realize that their young need more discipline to become better students and more conscientious adults.
So they're sent to Park's little shop of horrors.
"These days, kids don't know difficulty," says Park, a stocky man weighing almost 225 pounds. "Everything is convenient: hot water, refrigerators full of food. What they lack is a sense of caring for each other, starting with their own parents."
Unlike similar camps in the United States, where such tough treatment is usually reserved for youths with drug problems or those in trouble with the law, South Korea's kiddie boot camps are a rod not spared from the average child.
Park's is one of numerous camps that have sprung up in South Korea in the last decade. They are not monitored by the government, but Park says his venture, opened in 1997, has been free of major accidents.
The camp, on a lonely stretch of beach and grass on Daebu Island, about 50 miles from Seoul, attracts 15,000 students, age 7 to 19, each year. They live in military-style barracks, training in fields or along the beach regardless of the weather. At times boys and girls train separately, at others they are together, all wearing green fatigues, which give them the appearance of huffing and puffing little soldiers.
