The Chosun reports that Iranians are the most crime-prone foreigners in Korea, while Nepalese were apparently the best behaved:
The biggest group of convicted lawbreakers came from Iran, who made up 6,691 of every 100,000 foreign criminals, followed by 6,304 Russians, 5,672 Hong Kong citizens, 4,958 Americans and 3,190 Germans. Statistically the most law-abiding guests were the Nepalese, who made up only 211 convicted criminals per 100,000 wrongdoers from abroad, followed by 571 Indonesians, 807 Filipinos and 821 Thais.
Now, I can guess the kind of nonsense the Iranians, Russians, Hong Kongers and Americans are getting themselves into, but what the hell are the Germans getting themselves arrested for?
(Hat tip to commenter)
13 Comments
…what the hell are the Germans getting themselves arrested for?
Sex tourism?
And illegal DJing?
I never see Iranians in Seoul, they must be disguising themselves as Canadian ESL teachers or something.
statistically, the highest percentage of foreigners currently incarcerated in prison is iranians. most of the serious drug smuggling (or attempted drug smuggling) comes from them.
Seriously? You (I) just don’t see them on the streets….
These ’statistics’ are meaningless until they have been adjusted for at least two things:
1. We need to know the absolute number of each nationality present in Korea.
2. We need to know the seriousness of the crimes.
Are there, for instance, far more Iranians that Americans in Korea, or vice-versa?
Also, do Iranians and Americans commit the same sort of crimes?
Americans would need to be further subdivided into those associated with the military and those not.
Only then could we determine the propensity of Iranians vs. Americans toward commiting crimes that, e.g., one would need to worry about.
Jeffery Hodges
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I met an Iranian working as Santa Claus at a local sledding area on Christmas Day (2005), but he’s about the only one whom I’ve met.
We live near the Bonghwasan Subway Station (endstation of number 6 line), and we don’t see many foreigners at all around here.
Jeffery Hodges
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Jeff,
I did the math at my blog.
There were 13,045 foreign Criminals. For Americans: (13,045/100,000) x 4,958 comes out to about 647. That’s not exactly a wave of criminal wrong-doing.
I remember seeing this incomplete data somewhere before too.
Same sort of shady ‘hate-the-gaijin’ math that is done in Japan too. For example, if you remove the visa-related crimes (which a Japanese person cannot commit) foreigners in Japan actually have a better crime:person ratio then Japanese people do. But people like Ishihara don’t want you to know that.
Korea is good at coming up with numbers and figures. But as for analyzing what they really mean, forget it. There were two people who came from Timbucktoo. One of them was arrested for a “crime”. Korean papers will now report 50,000 people out of every 100,000 from Timbucktoo were convicted criminals. What kind of crime you ask? Chosun tells you right there, read it for yourself.
“Of those, 25.9 percent was naturalization fraud, 13.5 percent illegal entry into the country, 12.7 percent overstaying of visas and 12.4 percent illegal residency.”
- in other words, immigration overstays.
Some “crime”.
Kimbob, Dramman can tell you a lot about the meaninglessness of many official figures. The negligable US crime rate in Korea that was made to sound like a crime wave is a good case in point.
I am sure that traffic violations and parking tickets are also included in these numbers. Year to year, that is typically the largest catagory of crimes for Americans (and most likely Germans).
Maybe the Nepalese are so innocent, because they learned the hard way.
There was a story a few years ago about a migrant worker woman from Nepal who was picked up for some reason — not crime related but immigration I believe, but I don’t think by immigration itself