FIFA vs. Netizen Power

Sugar Shin,

I’m with you and Luke on the disgust you feel over some expats using Korean netizens’ unsportsmanlike conduct and the Korean media’s fanning the flames as a poor cover for making negative generalizations about Korea,and I’ve said this several times on World Cup-related threads.

However, with regard to this statement:

Nobody got killed in Korea because of race and color, as far as I know. In Europe it’s could become reality.

Violent crimes committed by Koreans against foreigners get little or no press here, so it’s difficult to quantify. I know of three during my nine-year stay from 1992 to 2001. I can’t give you names or obviously links, but other long-time expats might be able to vouch for the authenticity of these crimes:

In 1991?, a US soldier was beaten to death by a Korean man, who told police he didn’t like seeing the soldier laughing and talking with a woman.

In the late 1990s, a male EPIK teacher named Scott, who wasassigned to a boys’ high school in Suncheon? , was stabbed to death by a Korean man because he “didn’t like foreigners teaching Korean children.” This crime was not covered directly in the English papers. Rather, it came to light through a letter to the editor from a colleague and friend.

In 1999? 2000? a US military doctor, father of four with a pregnant wife, was stabbed to death by a Korean man in Itaewon. According to the report in the KT and KH, the man claimed the doctor had verbally abused him, and the report described the man as mentally disturbed. Of course, only a mentally disturbed Korean would harm a foreigner, but hey, aren’t all perpertuators of violent hate crimes mentally disturbed? To add insult to injury, one of the papers did not use proper language to describe the man’s version of events. Instead of saying “the man alleged…”, the paper simply said the man killed the doctor because the doctor had verbally abused him, treating the man’s version as fact. The other paper used words like “alleged” and “said”. Having read the papers every day during my long stay, I do not believe the wording was careless.

I could fill a whole blog with examples of “Pro-Korean” media defense of individual Koreans or organizations in conflict with foreigners. In fact, I kept a file during my stay and it might be in a box somewhere in my garage.

Despite all this media attention on international marriages and mixed-race Koreans, Korea is still very homogenous, so there’s no point in comparing hate crimes. Even if K. Ajoshi hates foreigners, it doesn’t matter because if he merely glimpses them from time to time in public. He doesn’t work with them, and he didn’t live with them as neighbors.

Many Koreans have told me they think one advantage of being racially homogeneous is the lack of racial conflict.

Sugar Shin, Jimong, and Michael:

Please don’t misunderstand my point. I wasn’t whining about a few bad apples. I mentioned my own experiences and provided specific examples of murders of Americans simply to show that racism exists in Korea, too.

My main point is that it is unfair for Koreans to judge themselves morally superior to Westerners because Koreans’ tolerance as a nation has never been tested. France, which considered itself loftily above the blatant racism of America, was shocked into reality by the recent riots in the immigrant suburbs. Racial conflict seems to be more or less in proportion to the numbers and degree of diversity in the population.

Consider for example the town of Palisades Park, New Jersey, across from NYC. In the 80s, Korean immigrants began moving in and buying up failing businesses, revitalizing the downtown. Korean became the main language at the local chamber of commerce meetings. Unsurprisingly, racial conflicts emerged. Today the town is about 40% Asian, mostly Korean.

Now imagine that the city of Namyangju, east of Seoul, attracts a large number of Russian immigrants, who start buying up businesses and enrolling their non-Korean speaking children in local schools. Imagine that over a ten or fifteen-year period, Namyangju becomes 40% ethnic European. Does anyone here think there wouldn’t be conflicts, especially in the schools? Organized group violence is already a serious problem in Korean schools, and if racially different children began attending Korean schools in large numbers, I believe we would see racial conflicts similar to what is found in North American schools.

Not only racial diversity, but also physical and mental disabilities. A typical classroom of twenty students at my school will contain at least one visually impaired child, a hearing-impaired child, an autistic child, and a child who uses a walker or wheelchair to move. Having returned to the US after so many years in Asia, I am IMPRESSED with how real human diversity, not just racial diversity, teaches our teachers and students to be tolerant and appreciate humanity in all its forms. The door to the counselors’ office in the middle school is adorned with a large pink triangle reading “safe space.”

How about Korean schools?

The only cities in Korea that have any proportionately large foreign presence are places like Dongducheon; a foreign military base is not the same as an immigrant community.

There are only pockets of diversity in Korea, mostly in the cities. The biggest foreign population, ethnic Koreans from China, are not highly visible.

That is my point. It is impossible to make JUDGEMENTS about racial attitudes between Koreans and other nationalities because the populations are so different.

The world would be a better place if we all tried to understand each other rather than judge each other.

JiMong,

Thanks for taking the time to read and comment on my long post. I didn’t think you’d find it since it’s being pushed down the page by newer threads.