Poor guy. Condolences to the Family.
They must have some powerful outlets in Thailand because I've touched the prong while unplugging something when I was younger, probably not much older than 7. And it didn't even hurt, just tingled and scared the hell out of me. Unless maybe it cause a heart attack in this kid or something.
Anyway, that really sucks for his family.
Because Japan and the US Modernized before the rest of the world in terms of adoption of electricity we use a less inefficient, 120V Outlet. Had people in the US and Japan not owned large appliances in the 50s and 60s we probably would have the same voltage found throughout the world. There was a movement to change to 240V in the US but the cost of replacing existing appliances was deemed to be too high. As such, Power Generation and Transmission in North America and Japan is no where near as efficient as it is in Europe. So, in theory, you can be shocked with twice as much power in most of the world than you can in North America or Japan. SFS is an electrical engineer in training (frightening, I know), perhaps he could indulge more about service voltages.