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This entry was written by Robert Koehler, posted on March 5, 2005 at 6:37 am, filed under East and Central Asia, Japan. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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17 Comments
she’s hot
::coughs:: So I’ve decided to go to Japan for Spring Break…
an asian chick who goes down on you in a bar…
okay, so she’s a celebrity, but did this really have to be in the news? i mean, aren’t there enough unqualified gaijin/oegugin teachers coming to this part of the world already?
np
Nora, I missed that part of the story that said Tae was with an “unqualified teacher”–oh wait, you just pulled that out of your a**, didn’t you?
no, that’s not what i meant, jesse jane. what i pulled out of my a** is that the perception of lots of easy asian chicks is what attracts a lot of people to come to korea or japan. usually i don’t go around stating that, but the only two comments prior to mine were both along that theme (particularly the second).
whoosh!
excuse me for venting.
Nora Park: been venting a little lately, I see. (Over at Oranckay and here. Where you been hiding before that?)
Call me naive, but I did not come to Korea with any perception of notion of “lots of easy asian chicks” at all. I came because this is the first job that I landed, for good or ill. I suspect that is true for many people, with student loans and few immediate employment prospects upon graduation.
Undoubtedly there must be some men who say to their college buddies “I wanna graduate and go to Korea/Japan/substitute another Asian country and teach English because the birds there are hot and easy!” But *most* English teachers come here initially for purely economic reasons. (I said “most,” yeah?)
What makes them stay here might be different. They might stay for the money, because they like the culture, or the women, or other reasons (a combination of push and pull factors). But I honestly doubt whether anybody who wasn’t already here or coming here would get on the phone to the nearest travel agent to check out flights to Tokyo simply on the basis of this or similar articles.
But to answer your original question: “okay, so she??s a celebrity, but did this really have to be in the news?” Sadly, in today’s society, yes. Yes that is news. For goodness’ sake, what took up a good 3-4 minutes on the BBC worlds news bulletin last night? The latest from Darfur? No. The aftermath of the latest earthquake in Iran or even the tsunami? No - Michael Jackson’s trial on child sex charges.
As Nicholas Kristoff wrote recently in the IHT, “[I]f our leaders are acquiescing in genocide, that’s because we citizens are passive, too. If American voters cared about Darfur’s genocide as much as about, say, the Michael Jackson trial, then America’s political system would respond.”
That is the sad state of news in our world. Famous person plus sex = BIG NEWS.
Hamel’s basically correct, the non-Asian men I’ve met in Hong Kong, Japan and Korea had wanderlust long before they contracted simple lust. Since Japanese porn is probably second only to the US in ubiquity it might give a certain impression of Asian women, but once we leave adolescence, the majority of us know women here are more difficult, err, complicated than that.
sorry, hamel, if it seemed like i was painting everyone with the same brush. i am not. i know lots of heterosexual men here who arrived with no salacious intent whatsoever. and to be fair, i know an increasing number of non-korean hetero women who are coming for lustful reasons, too.
while there are lots of hard-working people coming for adventure of a non-sexual variety, or for a chance to pay off student loans, there are also people who come because it’s often perceived as a great place for someone with no talent, no degree, and no drive to find (what they wrongly assume will be) a piece-of-cake job that will pay for cheap beer and easy women. and yes, zecks, japanese porn may be partly to blame (about the women, not the jobs or the beer).
i didn’t mean to disparage korea’s or japan’s teaching profession in general. quite the opposite, i think that it now suffers from an over-supply of unqualified people often willing to work illegally for whatever reason (including a lack of academic qualification), and it is those people to whom i was referring.
maybe men don’t end up feeling the brunt of this problem as much as women do. i can’t go to places like itaewon after 9 p.m. anymore without being bombarded by men who think korea is a big f-fest.
as for where i’ve been hiding, well, the answer is under mounds and mounds of paperwork. project after project befalls those in korea who cant’ say no. i think the last time i posted on a blog or list was a year or two ago.
np
The Korean government is far too lax about regulating what should be treated as part of the nation’s educational system, and not just another business. I think you’d find if it were administered properly, and that includes safeguarding the rights of Korean teachers, who I’ve heard are often abused by hakwon owners, but have fewer options than Westerners for redress. As with most things Korean, if the society improved for its own sake, for Koreans’ benefit, you would undoubtedly see a more professional group of foreign teachers here. Itaewon is another story altogether…
It seems like white men coming to Korea to get laid with “easy Asian women” are constantly an issue nowadays, especially since that recent English Spectrum thing.
My (very irreverant) take on this issue is this: WHO CARES?? As long as it’s consensual, there’s nothing wrong with people getting together. Yeah, some of those dudes may be jerks, and maybe criminals, but most of them are probably just normal guys who want to get some action whether they are in Korea or in America. I’ve always thought there isn’t enough “free sex” in Korea and we Koreans need to loosen up a bit and get laid more. Hooking up with people in Hongdae is at least better than:
1. Going to Cheongryangri and forking over 70,000 won for a quickie, with the ajumma knocking on the door after 20 minutes telling you to get it over with, or
2. Spending 100,000+won cash in Boss or Juliana or whatnot to find a one-night stand via “booking.”
At least people who hook up in Hongdae and the like are:
1. Doing it more “naturally,” and
2. Doing it for free!
We need this sort of culture in Korea. My theory is that people smoke too much, drink too much, and are always glaring at each other and getting pissed at each other because we’re not getting laid enough. And what about all the time and money wasted on miting’s and sogaeting’s just to meet new people? Parties and f**kfests are good!! They should become more widespread such that the general Korean populace, not just foreigners, can all take part in the action. Such culture would also help break the many double standards that exist (e.g. it’s OK for men to have lots of sex but not OK for women). Let us work together to bring about a happier and more harmonious society and build a better future for Korea! Hooray!
Is it just me, or does anyone else wonder why Ms. Park turned this thread into yet another tiresome discussion of English teachers and their moral compasses? I mean, c’mon Ms. Park, there are plenty of opportunities to vent your frustration through on-topic threads - no need to twist things out of all scope.
When you ponder, ‘maybe men don??t end up feeling the brunt of this problem as much as women do. i can??t go to places like itaewon after 9 p.m. anymore without being bombarded by men who think korea is a big f-fest’, you simply go further off topic - not to mention insult the male foreigner community - after all, why use Itaewon for your example, except to castigate all white males further?
you’re right, it is tiresome, but it’s not like i just pulled this out of thin air. i was simply responding to someone who had suggested the young woman in question was a reason to follow his di– to japan (sorry, admiral, i don’t mean to pick on you and i know you only meant it as a joke). to which i stated something along the lines that western phallic compasses point east.
why use itaewon as my example? because that’s where it happens. some corners or side streets there are like walking into a giant frat house. main streets, not back alleys. did i insult the ‘male foreigner community’? only the male foreigner community that acts that way. why, then, do i go to itaewon, you may ask? well, a few girlfriends live in the area, a bit too close to the subway station and the gentlemen patrons of gecko’s shouting out at women walking along the street below. the bar situation is such that having a quiet evening out for drinks (quiet evening = no smarmy character trying to pick us up) requires us to go somewhere far away from home.
to set the record straight on where my opinion lies, i’ll state that there are a lot of nice men out there among the non-koreans. lots, loads, heaps, and gobs. but the ‘party in korea’ crowd makes them a little harder to find, though when you find one, he tends to stand out.
np
Your’re right: it’s not like you pulled it out of thin air. However, it is like you decided to take a thread dealing with a female Japanese athlete performing a sexual act on a non-Japanese patron in a club/bar, and decided to complain about non-Korean teachers in Korea.
This thread clearly deals with those former topics, but as the report didn’t deal with Korea or teachers, why are you bringing that up? Further, why can’t anyone comment on sex, or sexuality, here? It’s certainly done throughout the blogoshere, and Marmot’s pages link to Korean-language websites, dealing with sex as news or sex as entertainment, too numerous to ignore.
Next time, if you don’t like something, why not criticize it directly? For example, why not criticize the bloggers or reporters who posted the information? Do you criticize patrons at a movie theater or museum simply for having their opinions, or do you disagree by contrasting it with your own opinion? The first two bloggers, whatever you may think of them or their opinions, were expressing opinions relevant to the subject.
gbnhj, i apologize. i took a thread dealing with a female celebrity performing a sex act on a club/bar patron, and i turned it into something sleazy.
you ask, “why can’t anyone comment on sex, or sexuality, here?” well, gee, gbnhj, that’s what i thought i was doing. i was making a comment on someone’s comment, just applying it in the broader context of gaijin in korea, too, not just japan (since we are in korea, after all).
while you insist that the first two bloggers were merely expressing opinions relevant to the subject, i have no business expressing my thoughts and opinions about theirs.
you see, free speech is a two-way street. just as those two have a right to say what they want (limited by marmot’s acceptance on his blog), so do i have a right to say something about it (within the same limit).
you even have a right to your double standard comment (that they are just talking but that i should not be saying what i am), and i have a right to point out that it’s a double standard simply because you don’t like what i’m saying.
I never claimed that you didn’t have a right to express your opinions, only that they should deal with the topic. I look forward to new views, whether or not they coincide with mine.
In all that you wrote, however, I still don’t see any connection between the article and English teachers in Korea, except the ephemeral link that you made in your last post. Why, everything’s connected, isn’t it? Oprah and Ali-G, Howard Stern and Gertrude Stein - one can always make connections, but are they relevant? As you may recall, that was my original point, wasn’t it?
By the way, I have nothing against sleaze - nothing. I like sleaze as much as the next person.
foreigners heading to japan to meet easy girls, foreigners heading to korea to meet easy girls. what a leap i made there.
Itaewon is where is happens? Nora, sex happens all over Korea, and in my opinion, Koreans are doing it with each other much more than foreigners are doing it with Koreans. To single out Itaewon and whites shows your anti white animus.