The Oranckay uses the Great East Sea Tug-of-War to illustrate how one man’s kidnapping is another’s harmless detainment:
So it seems that at one point in that little episode in the East Sea, the crew of the Korean boat, the Sinpung, took off with two Japanese coast card personnel who had boarded the vessel for an inspection.
You wonder, where were they going to take them? Back to Korean shores, of course, perhaps to make the case that the officers had been abusive. At the very least they weren’t very well going to throw them in the drink as shark bait. Thing is, and you can quote me on this whether you agree with me or not, Koreans just don’t think that, um, “detaining” someone is that big a deal, though to the Japanese the situation probably seemed quite desperate.
It’s a long post that introduces a number of incidents of note. Read it in its entirety pronto.
35 Comments
The 2002 subway incident was just a cultural misunderstanding?
Of course it’s hard for me to see it that way given the level of my feelings about the USFK/US-SK alliance situation, but it would be surprising to me to find out many people viewed it as such.
The students who borrowed the GI didn’t just walk him to campus to make him apologize. They held him for something like 2 to 4 hours at a large anti-USFK/US rally (memorial for the 2 dead middle school flowers), made him make statements against himself to the crowd, forced him to write a confession, then eventually marched him to the hospital where they and the riot police officers forced him to apologize to the ex-politician - after holding him for hours until the stage performances to promote hatred for him - a USFK GI - were finished.
In the video, the activists and riot leader, through a younger riot policeman who could translate, tried to get the soldier to say he started the fight by saying he directly attacked the Korean man, but the soldier kept saying he just threw punches blindly, because many people were manhandling him including kicking and hitting him.
The ex-law maker himself says - in at least one version of the story he told - that he “kind of brushed the soldier’s cheek” while he was trying to seperate the scuffling soldier and a group of something like 8 to 12 university acitivsts who had been promoting the anti-USFK rally with fliers before they spotted the white guy.
Another time, he said he simply tried to put his hand on the soldier’s mouth to keep him from cursing the students and himself.
(Another time, he said he just asked the soldier a question, and the soldier started beating him violently for no reason.)
The soldier said the man punched him in the face after rebuking him over his refusal to take the flier and his attitude toward the students.
Also according to the soldiers, after the students were joined by more of their comrades on the subway platform, and after they had gotten the three soldiers under control, the students kept manhandling them, including kicks and such, while debating what to do with them. Nearby riot police spotted the scene and managed to rescue two of the soldiers, before the third was taken to be an exhibit for the promotion of hatred against what he represented.
In the video, you don’t get to see his performance at the rally, but you do get to see the riot police running the two soldeirs through the gauntlet of university activists as the police try to get the GIs to the nearby hospital where a large group of riot police were already waiting.
Why were they waiting there? Because university activits had stormed the first floor lobby of the hospital some days before and laid seige to it to show solidarity for striking nurses.
If all of this is just a Korean thing, I think we should keep that in mind the next time the Korean press and people get into a tizzy over a street confrontation between a few US soldiers and another good citizen Korean male.
(here is a link to a slightly edited version of the video the activists put up at http://www.voiceofpeople.org — http://www.usinkorea.org/video.....fession.rm)
I’m not sure if any of the students involved were arrested or sentenced for the “scuffle” or borrowing the soldier for a little while.
For the first two days, the Korean press did the usual thing of calling for USFK to apologize for the subway incident and for the soldiers to stand trial in Korean court.
They were the ones taken to the police precinct for questioning (as suspects in a cry).
Just a cultural misunderstanding? No biggie?
cry should be crime……I type too fast for my own good….
It’s just another “cross-cultural misunderstanding,” but once again it’s Korean culture that must be understood and not the other way around…whatever.
I think refusing to understand why people take certain actions is a sign of weakness. Sorry to you fine folks above but I also think it is a sign of weakness to be at either extreme: (1) to release someone of his responsibility because you understand his cultural background or (2) to refuse to understand someone’s cultural thinking because you’re worried you might release him of responsibility for his actions.
I don’t see why it is not possible to understand what in a man’s mind makes him behave in a certain way while still holding him accountable for his actions.
The students in the subway incident still understand the legal definition of what they did. But understanding helps explain why they thought they could do it anyway, and - perhaps more importantly, it explains why the police didn’t send in the SWAT team to rescue the guy. You can call the police incompetent (weak, liberal, peace-nut) or you can call them wise; they knew the guy would be coming back in once piece and storming the campus would’ve led to much more serious violence. Even if you don’t agree with them, that doesn’t mean you have to insist on not understanding why they in their own minds thought they were making the right decision.
Man that’s covoluted, Mr. Oranckay. Most people in the world consider involuntary detainment kidnapping, and most people would not like to be subject to it. Why should Koreans get a special dispensation from that? Never mind, I know many Koreans who don’t think lightly of kidnapping, namely those whose relatives were taken by force to North Korea. While the government here might think lightly of such actions (when it suits them) it’s not beholden on the rest of us to “understand why they in their own minds thought they were making the right decision” when the consensus is that taking Japanese coast guard officers or US soldiers hostage is out of line.
Oranckay,
In general, at least in American and probably Western society and perhaps in Korea too, more often than not, “understanding” becomes a process of justification and an excuse.
And more directly, it seems to me, you tipped toed along that line with your use of the 2002 subway incident — especially with how you described it — what you said the actions of the activists were in it.
“But a man of his age can physically push a young man around in Korea, or at least do it and not then get a violent response, which appears to be what he got from the soldiers. Americans think that once someone touches you you are authorized to unleash more than is necessary to merely get out of the situation. Angered by that, the students accompanying Suh dragged one of the soldiers on to the campus of nearby Kyunghee University to make him “apologize.”"
I can work with the central theme of the post when it comes to the current South Korea-Japan sea event. For example, in the US context, all hell would have broken loose and the boat crew would have stood a good chance of being shot if the event took place along the southern waters of the US (and possibly near Canada too), because the US has a large amount of small craft drug running. If you sped off with a couple of US Coast Guard members stuck on your boat when they tried to inspect it, you would have been in for a world of shit.
But the 2002 subway incident?
It was a more serious event than you described it on your site, and it tended to push the interpretation toward the condoning side of “understanding.”
I should add, the use of the word “understanding” has been somewhat interesting to me for a good number of years for exactly the kind of influence in thinking it seems to have.
For example, what kind of difference do we get as readers if we substitute the word “know” for “understand”?
As for the motivation of the riot police, at least some of them told the press they didn’t interfere because they were afraid — not cowardly, but they could do the math between how many of them there were and how massive the protest was….
The riot police higher ups said the same thing about why they helped get an apology from the GI to the politician — all for the video camera of the activists.
I don’t think it played as a “cross-cultural misunderstanding.” Everyone I knew, including a few leftists, thought it was an embarrassment that something like that would happen. This is the same ??œ?²½??? who filed suit against 271 lawmakers, “arguing that he can’t recognize them as representatives of the people since they have committed numerous mistakes, including the impeachment of President Roh Moo-hyun.” Kidnaping someone completely unrelated to the case and making them apologize was stupid.
Here is what the Chosun Ilbo had to say about it:By American standards, being held or taken anywhere by a group of demonstrators can appear to have been a momentary kidnapping of its soldiers, and forcing someone to apologize for a past event with which the individual in question had no involvement is illegal and violent activity. It is about this in particular that the US embassy and the United States Forces Korea are so strongly protesting with the Korean government.
Anyway, I can’t find it anywhere on-line (damn pay service at KH!), but I thought some of the students or Suh himself were convicted of illegal activity for detaining Private Murphy.
You can waste your time yelling WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?? as you punish the police for negligence of duty and for demoting the judge that gave the students light sentences. Or, you can not have to sit around and wonder what the heck they were thinking and just punish them.
Let me know where someone suggested Koreans get a “special designation.” But those involuntary detainments happen a lot in Korea, overwhelmingly among Koreans, and call it what one wants there has to be a reason (NOT excuse) why that is so. Either you have to say that does not happen very often or you have to find a reason. There just has to be a reason why in most countries young people would’ve just beaten their opponent(s)’ to death in a genuine old fashioned fight in the street and why the Korean students didn’t. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.
One reason some might want to quote is that Koreans are just lawless. Perhaps that’s technically true, given that holding someone against his will is indeed illegal. But bloodying him up in the street and holding him against his will are both illegal, and there would have to be a reason why the students chose one illegal option over the other. Please share your wisdom.
The comparison to NK kidnappings is exactly what I had in mind when I talked about “refusing to understand” and what probably motivates that.
usinkorea and kushibo have both posted comments while i was writing mine above.
Realizing how Americans react I should have better qualified my statement that it was a series of cross-cultural misunderstandings. I do think it was that in the sense that it made matters worse. At the time I got a call in the middle of the night from a full-time reporter at OhmyNews and he (having lived in Canada) wanted to confirm his belief that the Americans were probably really scared and probably thought that once touched by Suh and the students they felt they had license to start swinging. Yes I told him I agreed with that and yes I do think that’s culture and I would indeed like Koreans to understand. (I think some of the behavior in the Sinchon stabbing incident can be seen in that light, too. A drunken USFK soldier is surrounded by Koreans who start pushing him and he pulls out a knife and starts swinging. Unforgivable in Korea, but makes sense to some degree in an American context, so yes, I think culture escalated that situation, too.)
usinkorea is right, I really don’t think I understand the subway incident as well as I should.
I’ve posted a couple of comments to Oranckay’s post, but I’ll stick to responding here for the rest of the thread of the discussion.
“usinkorea is right, I really don?€™t think I understand the subway incident as well as I should.”
Before I got to this part, I was already going to point out that your original post wasn’t a focus on the 2002 incident but on the coast guard boat thing and Korean society’s tendancies in viewing incidents where people are taken off.
I don’t think the 2002 subway incident matches up with the theme well because of the level of confrontation and the objectives of the students in taking the GI — which was to promote anti-Americanism by using him as a participant in the rally and using the subway fight to stoke the already boiling anger over the death of the 2 middle school girls.
I do think the stabbing incident fits well with the theme of cross-cultural understanding just as Oranckay stated. On my blog, and I think in the usinkorea.org site, I explained for those unfamiliar with Korea that very point — that taking a knife out in Korea, even if you are outnumbered by a hostile crowd in a physical confrontation, is very unusual.
Back to the 2002 incident, the very initial reaction by Korean society (and the press) to the 2002 subway incident was very different from what it was a couple of days later — after the New York and LA Times both ran a story about the “kidnapping.” The very initial reaction was similar to the other “GI crimes” reactions, but South Korea is generally pretty in tune with how American society takes things, and they quickly realized the students had crossed a line that created a handgrenade waiting to go off in the general US-SK relationship.
It didn’t go off. I only found 2 articles about the subway incident in the US press.
“Here is the Korea Times initial coverage —
An elderly lawmaker-turned-activist is in the hospital with his nose broken and eyes bruised after being assaulted Saturday by a U.S. soldier in Seoul.
Police said Suh Kyong-won, 65, was punched in the face during a subway train fracas between a group of college students and three U.S. soldiers in civilian clothes.”
I can’t find the quote quickly from the Korea Herald editor, but as I remember it, there were two responses worth noting in the first couple of days — the first being the soapbox cry of GI crimes, the second being the kind the KH editor is loved for (by me) in which she says it’s unfortunate the Americans will likely be sidetracked by thinking about what the activists did and not understand the righteousness of Korean society’s anger at USFK over the middle school girls and to a lesser extent the subway incident. But later, all the Korean English papers quickly dropped this line of thought and came out with criticism of the students and the activist.
Anyway, I do feel I’ve gotten the discussion off on tangent, because though I would tweek Oranckay’s understanding of the subway incident, it wasn’t his main focus, and in general, I have seen some of the same things in Korean society when it comes to confrontations and reactions.
I can’t think of any seizings, but as I wrote, I’ve seen plenty of street confrontations where I left scratching my head because I knew in America, even a friend wouldn’t “endure” it as the Koreans did. And since I was in Korea for the 1994-95 subway incident, I took a note from Korean society and “endured” a few physical confrontations with drunk Korean males (and even a couple of sober ones) beyond the bounds of what is normal for me in America. I wasn’t trying to adapt to Korea’s way of thinking on it. I just understood as a white man, my chances of explaining things to the Korean cops wasn’t good.
I also meant to add that the anti-USFK newsletters and usinkorea.org site were in large part a direct result of the 2002 subway incident.
When the US press didn’t cover it, I got pissed off enough to want to do something/anything to get my viewpoint on the South Korean approach to the US-SK relationship (and especially their feeings about USFK) out. I and I know several other expats who set up blogs or started speaking out on other sites were already pretty frustrated with having to live through the 2002 hate fest, and the lack of attention to it in the US news, but the 2002 subway way event and it’s American media non-reaction were too much for me. (I also think the Korea Media Watch site sprang up at this time close to this event).
So, the subway event was something that stuck out in my mind a great deal…
Oranckay, you are one of the most oblique writers I’ve ever read.
I’m not sure what “involuntary detainments happen a lot in Korea, overwhelmingly among Koreans” means–Koreans detain other Koreans? The point being…? Anyway, I said “dispensation,” meaning let off the hook for not following the rules (the latent Catholic in me chose that one I guess). I think you’re trying to say that non-Koreans should try to understand what motivates particular people in Korea to behave in a particular way, at least that’s what I got out of your blog post. But Koreans aren’t alien life forms, it’s typically as easy to divine their motivations as anybody else’s, and it doesn’t absolve them of responsibility when they break laws, their own or anothers country’s–that is, I’m certain involuntary detainment is against the law in Korea, and certainly is in Japan.
“The comparison to NK kidnappings is exactly what I had in mind when I talked about ?€œrefusing to understand?€? and what probably motivates that.” Again, I’m just dense, what are you talking about? What probably motivates refusing to understand what by whom? All I can gather is that, from posts like this, you go through great contortions to be an apologist for some aspects of Korean society that are quite frankly very easy to understand and still object to. Even most Koreans would object to the students’ behavior, or the sailors’, and all of us, Korean or Oranckay or not, “understand” it.
oranckay wrote:usinkorea and kushibo have both posted comments while i was writing mine above.
Realizing how Americans react I should have better qualified my statement that it was a series of cross-cultural misunderstandings.If you’re saying here what I think you’re saying, then you’re being a grade-A ass. (If I have mis-inferred, then I apologize for even hinting that you might be an ass).
Anyway, I have been remiss here in thinking (and replying in #7) that someone had suggested the incident had played as a cultural misunderstanding, when what was actually suggested was that the incident had been the result of a cultural misunderstanding.
I do think there is a lot of evidence to suggest it might have been that. The GIs in question were probably reasonably defending themselves from an aggressor whose intent they did not know (and I don’t think it’s doing them any favors by drawing in the drunken idiot who pulled a knife and stabbed someone in Shinch’on), not knowing that their language and actions might be misconstrued.
Well, when in Rome and all that tells us that the GIs should have been a little less hesitant to swing when they felt threatened.
BUT… these guys were ambushed. Someone was looking for trouble and they spotted it when they saw these three guys. Sun and his followers were looking for an incident to whip up more trouble, and it walked right in front of them. More than reflecting the anger of the day, they were stoke it. (This appears to be the m.o. of the leadership of many of the anti-USFK groups.)
Sun likes to manipulate the media and that’s what he was trying to do. That’s why I can’t really say that there was a cultural misunderstanding on Suh’s side. Angrily confronting strangers and then essentially kidnapping them is not something that is “culturally acceptable” in Korea that the US military personnel just simply unwittingly fell victim to.
I think you’re giving Suh and his followers too much of a free pass on this.
MichaelMichael wrote:Oranckay, you are one of the most oblique writers I?€™ve ever read. I?€™m not sure what ?€œinvoluntary detainments happen a lot in Korea, overwhelmingly among Koreans?€? means?€“Koreans detain other Koreans? I was “involuntarily detained” once.
I was headed overseas at Kimpo when that’s what Kimpo was still used for, when the Immo official said, “Hey, you can’t leave. There’s some hold on your passport.” He didn’t know what it was for, so he suggested I go over to the Court in S??ch’o-dong to see. It was a holiday, so they were under-staffed, but they tried to figure out the problem (long story short: it turns out there was a hefty fine on my car because it had been reported “abandoned” by my previous employer).
It took a while to figure this out, and when the person helping me was called away for something for an extended period, I was left sitting in their office. Some other official comes in, grabs me by the arm and makes me sit in the holding area with some guy who had bilked his relatives or a business partner out of hundreds of millions of won and another who was dragged in on a warrant for physically assaulting someone (I think).
When I stood up to ask to call my employer, I was yelled at to sit down. The guy wouldn’t even let me go to the bathroom. Then the guy who was handling my case comes back and says, “Where’s Kushibo?” And the guy who forced me into the holding room pointed in that direction, and the first guy says, “What the hell did you put him in there for?”
The court, by the way, voided the fine, but that had nothing to do with the way I was treated. I did manage to get on the next plane going to where I was going.
The moral of the story: your crimes will catch up with you. Even crimes you didn’t do.
Kushibo, great story. As for the whole US soldier “cultural misunderstanding,” I remember thinking at the time that the “students” had some cochones to detain or whatever the term that shows appropriate understanding is
those soldiers, who are trained to kill, and that the soldiers were pretty well behaved under the circumstances.
I’m not trying to sound like what happened to those US soldiers in 2002 is right nor am I minimizing what happened. But I just want to say I know exactly what Orancay is saying and that he is not excusing that act of anti-Americanism. Read his blog again it says:
“Anyway, it seems to me it’s one of those behavioral traits in Korea to think you can borrow someone in an incident already set in motion without it being a terrible crime.”
Now anyone who knows anything about Korea knows this to be very true. Unless the “kidnappers” raped or murder the victim(s), or held the victim for ransom, it’s just not thought of as serious as it is in the West. The attitude is that “the kidnappers had a gripe, they used you for a while, but they released you unharmed. So what’s the problem here?”.
Another is the mentality toward assults. It’s acceptable in Korea to use controlled violence (if there is such a thing), to express displeasure toward some form of public policy. That is why Samsung’s Lee Kun Hee can be manhandled by angry student protestors but no one will bat an eye. Just imagine if Lee Kun Hee was a foreigner, I can see what kind of uproar there will be in the expat community.
Now before someone accuses me of hiding behind cultural relativism to excuse poor Korean behaviour, I’m not. All I’m saying is that, that’s how Koreans think. And I happened to believe this is part of the Korean thinking that badly needs changing.
Kimbob, I know that is what Oranckay is saying in that rather meandrous way of his, I live in Korea and see expressions like that almost daily. But his underlying “theme,” although apologies if I’m misrepresenting it, is that “we” (non-Koreans) must understand Koreans to the point of indulging behaviors that we wouldn’t tolerate from others. And since the US soldiers and Japanese coast guard is the “we” here, they’re least likely of all to be indulgent. In fact I’m really fascinated by those behavioral traits, if they can be wrapped up like that. What is that? It’s not exactly passive-aggressive, but sort of.
That is why Samsung?€™s Lee Kun Hee can be manhandled by angry student protestors but no one will bat an eyeHuh? No one bats an eye? I would say that lots of people were batting eyes.
Maybe this kind of thing is something that members of certain groups think is okay, even when the general public would generally find it distasteful. To say this is a “Korean thing” is a bit unfair to all those people.
I meant “batting eyes”, like arrests/investigations/charges/jail time for assult.
“Angrily confronting strangers and then essentially kidnapping them is not something that is ?€œculturally acceptable?€? in Korea that the US military personnel just simply unwittingly fell victim to.”
The taking people captive is unfamiliar to me from my experience, but the confronting a stranger, even to the point of laying hands on (not fists, but grabbing and pulling and pushing) as well as the other person “enduring” is a part of Korean culture I’ve seen a good number of times. And as Oranckay said, age is a key factor. I’ve seen old men and older men just in their 60s rebuke at length in public complete strangers who were probably in their early 30s.
I meant the two as a set, with emphasis on the second part… which is the main topic here anyway.
The interpretation of “law and order” is not the same in Korea. For instance, there will be some people who will decry the violence against Samsung’s Lee Kun Hee. But I bet a good change of those same people will turn around and say he deserved it, if the victim happens to be Kim Woo Choong.
Unless I’m wrong, the Korean law didn’t change until this year, where it was perfectly legal to physically detain other people if there is a “good reason” to do so, like that person owing lots of money - a perfect case of forced prostitution. Same thing with allowance of assults/intimidations/threats for some “good reason”. This is why loan sharks do a rip roaring business. If the people don’t pay up, there’s little that stops the thugs from carrying out their “enforcements”, and the police would be reluctant to get involved. To Koreans, you borrowed money, you failed to pay, you accept the consequences. To Westerners, this is lawlessness.
Since were are telling some personal stories, rereading my last comment, I thought back to the time I got lectured off the subway by a very ancient little man.
I spotted the trouble soon after I got on. He was pretty far down the car, but he was standing in the middle of it wearing one of those old, traditional all white day wear Korean outfits. He also had on one of those paper or postboard or whatever pointed hats that look like what “the dunce” had to wear in old American cartoons. The hat had red writing on it I couldn’t make out and he was carrying a poster with red writing I also couldn’t make out. And he was giving a speech.
I wasn’t too worried at first. He could have been protesting anything.
But, as I stood holding the rail and looking the other way to avoid eye contact like you would a gorrilla, I started to feel odd. Slowly it dawned on me that I could now understand what the man was saying. He had switched to rather good English.
That day’s topic: American devils and Russian devils…
Fun fun…
He had walked the length of the car explaining in English now why Americans were bastards (and the Russians too). And he had dramatic flare.
As he approached closer, he would say stuff like, “because of American devils….Russian devils…..Ah! New shoes. Life is good. (being sarcastic implying I was a carpet baggar) Go home! Go home! Why is Korea divided? Why………American devils……ah! new shoes! go home!! go home!!
He followed me into the next car, and when the train stopped two stops down (I was going about an hours ride away) and I got off to wait for the next one, he got off and kept it going the whole time. Another subway had just come for the other direction, so I got on it and he didn’t, and I rode up one stop and switched trains to head back on my way.
This was 1998…….
I considered that a Korean “enduring” thing. There would have been a 50/50% chance that if the same thing happened in the US, I would have unleashed a healthy barrage of crap back at him, probably very hot and full of colorful words in a quick burst with the hope of shocking him into moving on.
Funny thing is, I heard that same story back in 1988 on CBC Radio during the Olympic coverage, and I still hear about the similiar story periodically. Either there’s lot of guys that are running around doing that, or it’s the same old guy who’s been doing this for a living year after year.
One night last year I sat in the “reserved” seats for the elderly and pregnant women at the end of the subway, and this totally smashed old guy across the aisle went off on me screaming didn’t I know who those seats were for, and I told him I did, but when they’re empty anyone can sit in them, and laughed, that just set him off even more, screaming so loud everybody in the car was watching. Two middle-aged women got on and sat next to me, caught a bit of his ranting and told him to shut up, which he did (sort of, grumbling). Then they apologized to me, but I said “kwenchanayo” (too lazy to switch to Hangeul keyboard for that, sorry). Korea man, your business is my business
From what I’ve seen/read/heard, you’re not supposed to sit in them, even if they’re empty (unless you are elderly, disabled, or pregnant). I’ve seen elderly and relatively young-looking people alike start railing on people who shouldn’t be sitting there.
That’s really funny, because I’ve seen many, many young people sitting in those seats, a couple of times with a pregnant woman standing nearby, and I confess that once I played adjossi and told a guy in his 20s to move his ass out for a pregnant woman. But to even this out, I’ve seen many younger people in general give up seats all over the train for older people, and I rarely sit down on the train now, even though I am quite ancient
Kimbob,
You’ll have to define “same” for me.
Being confronted on public transportation by older Koreans is certainly not too rare. It can happen to Koreans, and besides my own handful of occasions of being harassed by an elderly and sometimes not so elderly and sometimes drunk/sometimes sober Korean male, I’ve heard similar stories from other expat teachers and soldiers.
If you mean “exactly the same” —- old man wearing traditional regular clothing and holding a one man soapbox protest in the middle of the subway —- I can only say this….
I’m a pretty religious fellow, so telling a bold faced lie like the story I wrote about isn’t something I do, but if I would tell such an extended lie, I guess I’d write this paragraph too…
I’ve read some proven bullshit stories about Korea — I’m thinking of a gang rape story in Pusan, but I and a couple of other expats regular to Dave’s ESL Cafe (at the time) used enough of the “facts” given to call different authorities and prove the person who wrote the story and then backed the story up through use of another screen name was a complete jackass and liar.
Sadly, I have no facts in my story that can be verified. You can either take it or not.
One of the common elements from my experience and from others I’ve heard is this
I do see people violating this, but I did a mental survey on a few recent subway trips on lines #4, #3, and #2, and 90~95% of the time, no one was sitting there who shouldn’t even though that meant having to stand up (the disparity between the 90 and the 95 was that I wasn’t sure if one woman was pregnant).
The exception is for the wheelchair-access area, where lots of people do use the area for standing.
USinKorea, I got the impression (though I could be wrong) that Kimbob was actually suggesting it could be the same person. I think that’s perfectly plausible. If the guy’s a regular… the subway system isn’t THAT vast.
USinKorea, I wasn’t accusing you of lying. Sorry, wrong impression.
Just like Kushibo said above, also just saying I’ve heard of “similiar” (didn’t really mean “same”) stories before.
Kushibo:
My observations on Line 2 have been somewhat different from yours. I often see people who are not elderly, pregnant, or disabled sitting in those seats. I’ve never read the stickers carefully enough to see if it says something like ?…¸??¸ etc. ??€??¤ ??Œ, or just “never, ever sit here.”
My Korean wife thinks nothing of sitting in those seats, and so I sit down beside herwhen no one requires them, of course. Even though we’re not visibly together (we don’t hold hands, prudent, conservative folks that we are), no one has ever said anything to me. And I always get up as soon as a ???????²???? or ????¨¸??? gets on.
Regarding ????°° chewing out ????°° on the subway, yeah, I’ve seen it too.
Kimbob,
OK. That was the clarification I needed.
I used to have a set speech for hakwon instructors new to Korea about how if they stayed in Korea for the full year, and they got out to take a look around Korea, they would probably have 1, possibly 2 unpleasant experiences in the street or especially around public transportation areas — subways, trains, train and subway stops, and the train and bus stations, and usually these experiences would be with older Korean men. But, I’d say, you won’t run into those situations frequently enough to spoil Korea for you.
I wouldn’t add until much later that the hakwon experience would probably spoil it for them anyway…
..which they would have already learned by that time….
Heck, I’ve seen drunk ?????€?”¨s sleeping it off on these seats…
Interesting.