Alas, that’s not the kind of headline you’re likely to see gracing the New York Times, the Party Pooper points out.
America: Paradise for Korean Sex Perverts
This entry was written by Robert Koehler, posted on February 18, 2008 at 9:18 am, filed under Korean Diaspora, Korean Media. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.
134 Comments
Too bad it won’t happen like that. This is a time when some self-reflection is warranted on this side of the ocean.
. . . self-reflection in terms of the shoddy, race-baiting that goes on in Korean media, that is. If the legal system here was more like Britain or the states (equitable), someone would have been sued already for libel.
party pooper is funny
Poor kids.
Party pooper may be funny but he is so right.
yes, funny because he is so right.
So, are there colleges of journalism in SK? If not, why not? And if so, wtf do they teach there?
My old high school newspaper seemed more professional… unless it came down to the issues of dirty restrooms and closed campus policy.
These animals need to have their nuts cut off.
pp has become a korean.
he thinks like them.
1 & 2, that’s part of the pervasive victim mentality- Koreans are forever the victims of history, Japan, the U.S., evil foreigners, yada, yada, yada.
That means they don’t ever have to do any self-reflection as they feel like they are never the ones doing anything wrong.
Once in a while, there is some self-reflection in the media(the current Namdaemun burning), but it lasts about as long as my first sexual encounter- 2 minutes!
Get this: in Korea I’ve seen both Korean men and Korean children, often in close proximity to each other. Should I inform the authorities?
#10,
Nice blanket statement. Ironic that you’d write that in support of a strongly sarcastic criticism of the Korean media’s use of the same kind of logic.
i know i personally wont feel safe to have any of my unborn children as long as there are unmonitored Korean men roaming abput. they should all be tagged and numbered so law enforcement agencies can track their movements and have a early warning system in place whenever one of these child-molesting-spree-killing time bombs goes off.
call it how I see it!
As a show of goodwill I urge all Korean males everywhere to register themselves as sexual predators at their local police station. Do so now, before it’s too late!
It’s for the good of the children.
Did you see that guy’s mugshot? Talk about looking as if he is exhasusted. He looks like he has been seeing one too many internet porn page to the point where he just shoots blanks.
19 yo foreign exchange students from America aren’t required to have their criminal backgrounds checked when they come to Korea, now are they?
I wonder when having an E2 visa teaching ESL in a peninsular country whose population is a homogenous group of Asians ever became a people group equal to race or ethnicity.
And if I were a parent sending my kids to hagwons with foreign teachers from countries as vast and diverse (and violent) as America, I’d want their backgrounds checked too. And if these teacher folk hit the international wire and cause a sensation, as when they post pics of themselves doing the thing with young little children, and it’s found that they were once teachers at these hagwons, I sure as hell wouldn’t feel easy about it, and would wish standard measures be taken to make the people who are hired be as professional and committed to teach English as possible. No random loser teaching my children will do.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/ww.....19068.html
According to this, the exchange student was probably just “curious”.
BIG wtf to that excuse.
chiamatt, do you actually read the articles you post up? or are you so drunk with sarcasm that you forgot to make sense? the report has nothing to do with hanse park. and it doesn’t speculate. it notes the reports given by sex offenders themselves:
“About 73 percent of adult offenders and 82 percent of the youth offenders said that they failed to control their sexual desire and committed the crimes to fulfill these needs.
But some 12 percent of adult offenders said drinking led them to commit the crimes while 9.5 percent of young people said that curiosity was the main motive.”
19. I do not.
Fine, 9.5% of hanse park was curious.
I bet he takes the “I needed sex to clear up my acne” defense.
Fair enough. I happened to agree with the tightened E-2 regs. But you do realize, of course, that argument works both ways:
http://metropolitician.blogs.c.....-perv.html
And Metro didn’t even mention this guy:
http://www.portlandtribune.com.....y_id=28284
http://wweek.com/editorial/3114/5992/
Wouldn’t want these guys in a school with my kids. I suppose mandatory mental examinations wouldn’t be completely uncalled for for male Koreans looking to enter the United States to study. The fact that two of those guys came to the US as young children isn’t really relevant — the new E-2 regs wouldn’t have caught the Canadian guy who was diddling kids in Thailand, either.
@ 21
Having sex clears up acne? Is that another one of those “fan death” superstitions from Korea or is that one from somewhere else? It’s the first time I heard of it.
@22
Funny…the one criminal from Portland was named “Dong Kim.” With a name like that, no wonder he went off the deep end.
1. If you are stressed by living among white folk, don’t move to our countries.Better yet, take responsbility for how you raised your underwear-stealing kid, subjecting him to a supremely fucked-up cult as well.
2. That’s got to be one of the most bogus reasons for emigrating to the U.S. from Korea that I’ve ever read.
#17 I think most people get the visa regulations. I personally agree with everything but the blood test. But its the assumptions, mass hysteria, and racist remarks that bothers people. Notice the title of the orignal article in the U.S. The title of the article alone says so much. Would it be the same in Korea? Well, we know the answer already. I want the same treatment that Koreans get in my country. I want to be able to rent a car or movie in my neighborhood without being denied because I’m a foreigner. Koreans will never, never change. Time to stop getting stepped on.
On the previous post of this blog is a listing for an upcoming lecture on journalism in Korea. It’s being given by A. Lin Neumann, Chief Editor of the JoongAng Daily, and Korea’s highest-ranking foreign editor. I would strongly suggest to all able to attend that they do so, and ask some of the very same questions that have been brought up here. Perhaps I shall do so myself.
I’m thinking of attending that, if for no other reason than getting a straight answer on the reporting difference between “John Edward Smith (34-M), a Canadian citizen, is suspected of…” and “김모군 is suspected of …”
If it worked in both ways, it wouldn’t be such a freaking disanalogy.
For starters, you’re looking for additional measures and seeking to apply them to everyone or every male, no matter who they are, of a very particular group of people. Whereas the E-2 regulations are basic fare (ie they should exist) that neither apply to all foreigners nor single out Americans or American males.
If you were a parent sending your children to hagwons with all these random foreigner teachers being employed with minimum backgroun check, surely you’d be worried. And, likewise, if I were a parent of children and I had -any male- coming in to my home, of course I’d be worried and would seek to make sure that the exchange program isn’t sending me a juvenile or a rapist. But, then again, exchange students aren’t likely to have criminal records. And, then again, I wouldn’t be pushing for laws seeking to ensure the safety of the homes of exchange families by only singling out Korean males.
If I were a parent who was that worried, then I wouldn’t send my children to a hagwon having a foreign teacher. Very simple.
But the point is I wouldn’t send kids to schools where criminals are allowed to be teachers — foreigners or not.
It’s not about ‘random foreign teachers’ it’s about discrimination, hypocrisy and double standards.
The new rules aren’t that bad. But Koreans who work with children should be equally tested for drugs and whatnot. It’s only fair that parents shouldn’t feel worried about their kids due to the teacher.
Korean teachers get up to all sorts of mischief and are lightly punished, a foreign male getting up to that stuff and there would be innocent foreign teachers’ blood running in the streets.
It’s the discrimination that is so unjust with the new regulations.
The only pot smoking teacher I’ve met here was a gyopo, he didn’t have a degree either! He wasn’t a paedophile though to my knowledge.
From the Willamette Weekly:
Note how this set of facts is reported in the US newspaper as prima facie evidence something was seriously wrong with this guy Sung Soo Kim. And yet anyone who has lived in Korea can tell you this describes half (all?) the male population of similar age.
I was just discussing this profound difference between our societies with an associate today. Wait till I show her this one!
Exactly right Brendon, but the stockpiling of stolen underwear/used toiletries & rape/mutilation porn was proof that this guy was eventually, if he hadn’t already, gonna do some serious harm.
And his mother goes with the “He’s not a bad boy, he’s just had a hard life, so you should go easy on him”. It’s like a broken record with these people. If life is so gawd da@mned hard in the U.S., why didn’t you pack up and move back to Korea? Because you know deep down it’s better than what you came from.
I think the police are right in looking for every way possible to keep this guy incarcerated because he is a real danger.
abcdefg, you are missing the point. Party Pooper’s blog was satire. Biting, though it was. The whole point of it was how the Korean media uses one case to paint the entire foreign English teaching community as evil, drug addict, forged degree holding, pedophiles. They do it to sell papers and we are sick of it.
The point was to show what it would be like if the same thing were done to them.
Most of us agree with having regulations on teachers. We want the kids to be safe.
However, we do not like the attitude of “guilty until proven innocent” and we certainly hate the Korean media regularly claiming false information like the majority of us foreign teachers are criminals and/or have fake degrees.
They regularly just make up statistics that usually try to portray the foreign community as bad people. These are libelous/slanderous forms of sensationalistic “news” for which they should be held accountable.
Now, do you get it?
“The new rules aren’t that bad. But Koreans who work with children should be equally tested for drugs and whatnot. It’s only fair that parents shouldn’t feel worried about their kids due to the teacher.”
My general sentiment… I think part of the cause of hysteria is the protectiveness of their children by parents (people do get extra crazy when it comes to their kids). And I don’t think anyone can argue against background checking any workers who come in close contacts with kids (a standard procedure in U.S., if I’m not mistaken).
We don’t have a Department of Precrime in the United States. Our criminal justice system requires the state to affirmatively prove that the accused committed the crime of which he’s accused — not just proof he’s a creepy, creepy dude.
In respect of the “Sung Soo Kim lived at home and had no job at age 30″ issue, I think it highlights one of the profound inefficiencies in the Korean economy. These guys get their first job between 27 and 32, then get kicked to the curb before age 45 (usually up to five years sooner).
They have a working life similar to a 17-year cicada! And while they’re in the embrace of the company, nobody younger or older can be brought into the team at the same level lest it cause such profound cognitive dissonance that no work can be accomplished.
I think English actually presents an opportunity to remediate these tendencies, because our language enables a flatter social structure.
You’re exactly right Benico. What abcdefg doesn’t seem to comprehend is the hypocrisy, sensationalism and double standards that exist in xenophobic Korea. If I were a teacher in Korea, I’d submit to their checks and testing procedures as long as all the Korean teachers did the same. Imagine if in the US they said…”Ok we’re gonna do background checks and blood testing on all the Mexican teachers only”. Do you think there would be an outcry? In Korea this is exactly what happens though. And when one foreign idiot gets arrested for doing something stupid, all foreigners are portrayed as being criminals in the Korean media. Party Pooper’s satirical blog highlighted this perfectly IMHO.
No. I understand perfectly well.
If I were a foreigner and came to USA to temporarily teach at some place, I sure as hell would submit to background checks and testing procedures. I wouldn’t let my false ego take offense at the fact that the native teachers aren’t required to do the same. I’d quickly understand. After all, these natives are not foreigners teaching at random schools on a temporary basis, and have gone through their own professional procedures to become the teachers that they are. I’d learn, in other words, not to equate myself to them and realize that I am in fact a foreigner in a country that’s not my own. If anything, I wouldn’t be bitching and moaning about it on Korean on a blog whenever an American teenager commits some crime that has nothing to with my work.
And, again, Koreans don’t exclusively target any single nation. With all the satirical appeals to get the Korean male screened, you guys keep forgetting how unparticular the E-2 regulations are. If the regulations targetted only American males then you’d be able to return fire without the excess of unintended bullshit.
@#37:
A similar conflict exists in university when a student finally succeeds in the entrance exam after a couple of tries or transfers to another university; they find themselves two years older than their 동창 and *gasp* one year older than their 2nd year 선배. An acquaintance who transferred as a third year student at one university to a first student at another was taken aside by the second year students in the department and literally put in her place, “You will call us 언니 and we will speak banmal to you.” The poor girl was miserable throughout her college years. This age conflict was more of a problem in the past when students could apply to only one school in a given year.
#34,
Maybe, but that won’t stop Pawi from lying when he bringing up the number of posts in this thread in a future discussion.
“Koreans don’t exclusively target any single nation.”
Except that Koreans assume all white people are American, anyway.
#40,
The sophomores tried that nonsense with my wife when she did her second degree. It didn’t take her long to set them straight. As if she would put up with that. She was nearly 10 years older than them.
@39
“After all, these natives are not foreigners teaching at random schools on a temporary basis, and have gone through their own professional procedures to become the teachers that they are.”
maybe this is sometimes true, but not often enough for your justification to be valid.
“If anything, I wouldn’t be bitching and moaning about it on Korean on a blog whenever an American teenager commits some crime that has nothing to with my work.”
Again, you are missing the point. The people bitching about a foreigner’s crime are the biased local press, who report crimes in a way that casts the light of suspicion on ALL foreigners. That’s what the other foreigners are bitching and moaning about on this blog. The PP was using sarcasm to point out the difference between how it’s handled in Korea vs. USA, where other foreigners (in this case Koreans) were not, as a group, left feeling accused.
abcdefg, you say you get it, but apparently you don’t.
You go right back to the regulations thing. Apparently, you
ignored it when I wrote that most of us are for the regulation
of teachers. We want the kids to be safe.
However, we want it to be fair. You, obviously don’t think it should
be as you seem to be a supporter of the double standard.
What you are continually ignoring is the the fact that our main outrage
is the unethical Korean media who regularly attempt to tarnish the
reputation of the entire foreing teaching community based on a few instances.
While we agree that these few instances are unacceptable and we should do
everthing to get rid of the few perverts and miscreants, it is completely unethical, just plain wrong, for the Korean media to try and make all of us look like evil criminals who are preying on young kids.
All of this goes on while there are several documented cases of Korean teachers abusing/molesting kids who are let go with light punishment & probation.
Let’s get real! If the kids’ safety is a real priority, then the background checks and punishment for abusive teachers should be equal, no matter what the teachers’ nationality is.
If you continue to support that double standard, then you really don’t care about the childrens’ safety. It just becomes more of that “It’s okay when Koreans do it”.
“We don’t have a Department of Precrime in the United States.”
I know Brendon, and there is the whole “innocent until proven guilty” thing that I do support. However, having this guy off the street is a good thing, in my opinion. At the very least, he needs to be in a mental institution.
This has nothing to do with his being Korean. It has everything to do with
him having all the hallmarks of a serial killer in the making.
Benicio74 — who are “we”?
#45 “we”= the general consensus of the foreign community
I know it may seem that way but I’m not really missing the point. I just don’t like spelling out the basics.
The expat reaction to Hanse Park would be fine and all if it were truly equal and opposite to the actions taken by Koreans in response to the sensationalism going on in their news, but it’s not. So while I agree there is sensationalism (the new reports) and understand that PP is doing satire, I think from all the comments here that the Korean response to this sensationalism (the regulations) is being misunderstood and misrepresented, and I also feel that the nature of the sensationalism itself has been misunderstood.
#48: Don’t you need to pass some kind of test for that editorial license?
Apart from us all misunderstanding the truth as stated by “abcdefg”, can anyone tell me if any Korean media have reported the Hanse Park case at all?
Meanwhile… the Chosun Ilbo thinks this is news.
http://english.chosun.com/w21d.....40041.html
Yeah, they target 6. SIX! US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and England. Those are the possible holders for E-2 visas.
What about Ireland?
#50, perhaps I overstepped my bounds.
abcdefg, again it’s about the media’s race baiting and reporting/publishing of exaggerated lies in order to smear the entire foreign community.
When will you get it?
Never, I guess.
What do you think I’m referring to when I write about “sensationalism” in Korean news? Starcraft? Bae Yong Jun?
What you keep writing about again and again is what I’m already aware of — and disagree with.
Consider the example linked to in comment #22. The Metro posted his own spoof of an article. I’d like to see a real Korean Herald report that comes any where close to being its equal in junk (race baiting, etc). Let’s see if it really is “exactly” like Metro has it.
Frankly, I’m convinced the problem with expats is that they not only misunderstand Koreans and, considering their penchant for false analogies, forget all the major ways that Korea fundamentally differs from a Western country like America– ie, lacks America’s long history of diverse foreigners, is not a socially and culturally heterogenuous country in which its foreigners don’t seem like a contingent fringe of tourists– but expats also frequently exaggerate the extent of the grievances they really are entitled to.
The reason I keep referring the regulations as I have is because I take the expat moaning about it to be example of the above mentality. From reading the comments and sarcasm in this thread, I’d think the E2 regulations were some sort of gestapo applied to all non-Koreans.
Yes, we misunderstand Koreans.
Thank God there are so many wise kyopos out there who are blessed with the gift of perfect understanding of not only Koreans, but of us white folk and our societies too, to explain things to us.
#57 is like Foucault’s contribution to philosophy: It sounds cool, it sounds right, but examined closely, nothing has been achieved. Just back to square one with Socrates - I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
And gyopo who can determine the extent of the grievances to which we are entitled! Just so we needn’t burden ourselves determining it ourselves!
NOTE: For the record, I happened to agree, for the most part, with Korean immigration and cultural policy and, in fact, wish the United States would adopt much of it (for instance, I know few societies that would — or should — ever willingly let this happen).
I wasn’t being dogmatic. I wrote a few sentences that started with “I feel…”, “I think..”, and “I’d really like to see” in the context of an open argument.
Thanks anyway for proving my point — the expat and his penchant to exaggerate his injuries, and to misrepresent and misunderstand the Koreans!
Well, I guess it’s more of the angry gyopo’s message to foreigners living in Korea- “Whitey, you have no reason or stance at all to gripe about anything in Korea, so just shut up!”.
Nice!
Looks like a disconnect there…
Benicio74 and others are saying 1) K-media horrendously spins everything with the xenophobic fervor that will make a skinhead cringe (it’s hyperbole, of course) and 2) new immigration check policy is bs because Korean counterpart in education aren’t getting checked.
Abcdefg is saying 1) Yes, there are spins, but the parody and the subsequent comments are ridiculously exaggerated and 2) background check is a standard immigration procedure.
I think both are right… Korean newspapers spin things with xenophobic sentiment, but nowhere near the ’satire’ and the attached comments. Doesn’t mean Korean newspapers are right (dear, god. they are not), but neither is the overreaction.
It is true that background checks in immigration is justified, but so is background checking educators in general. I don’t think there’s any clash of arguments there… it just looks like it because abcdefg views it as an immigration policy while benicio views it as an education policy.
Is that about right, or am I just pulling things out of my ass?
If the US had adopted an immigration policy like Korea’s in the early 19th century, it would consist of a handful of statelets clinging to the Atlantic seaboard, if it existed at all.
Western Europe can also become a Muslim Middle Eastern majority in the next 100 years.
I think you have to live at California for a while to realize that the border down there is virtually non existent.
It’s a porous border.
Mexican govt is immoral.
When the US tells them to guard their side, they say racism.
While, the Mexican govt really badly mistreats their own minority groups.
Life will continue thus, and the Hispanic Americans will be in the majority soon.
their 1st generations will do hard manual labor work, no one wants to do.
their children, if they are born in the US, will acquire citizenships and have a better future.
that’s how it’s been going for the past 100 years or so.
LA. Hispanics. Check it out. Reality.
Unless the US pulls an Ireland, and pulls some kind of grandfather clause.
They got away with it.
I’m not sure if the US will.
the true sucker is the one who pulled in the time and played by the rules to immigrate into the US.
in the past most Koreans who did this were educated and had money.
but, this is changing now, too.
Poor Koreans are doing what Latin America is doing.
i thank the Latin Americans for their hard work, and bringing down prices.
However, it must be noted that I was never TB skin test positive, until
I lived in LA.
Illegal immigrants don’t do any health checks, obviously.
You sure you want to collect statistics from sites that offer this level of mathematical competence, boss?
The projection says that from 14 percent of the U.S. population in 2005, the Latino population will triple by 2050 and account for 29 percent of the country’s population.
I actually take back some of what I’ve said. Satire, at least in its most humorous form, has the inherent liberty to exaggerate the situations as long as it is funny to do so. (i.e. entirety of Daily Show and Colbert Report)
“The projection says that from 14 percent of the U.S. population in 2005, the Latino population will triple by 2050 and account for 29 percent of the country’s population.”
That’s mathematically feasible if the entire population increases.
Let’s say…
1400 out of 10000
1400 * 3 = 4200
4200 = 0.29X
X = 14483
If population increases from 10000 to 14483, 14% of initial population can triple and represent 29% of final population. And yes, I was writing biochem lab at the moment.
Nice work, kid. I was reading in my own “the proportion of Latinos in the population” without knowing it.
Anyhow, even if non-Hispanic whites become less than a majority in the US, we kind of deserve it, having started the trend by importing Africans.
Plus, I figure we’ve got at least until 2070 or so before we cease being the largest minority group… especially if we stop using the one-drop theory as the definition of whiteness.
bumfromkorea, that’s possibly a more sensible way of looking at it.
“forget all the major ways that Korea fundamentally differs from a Western country like America– ie, lacks America’s long history of diverse foreigners, is not a socially and culturally heterogenuous country in which its foreigners don’t seem like a contingent fringe of tourists”
Hmm, actually it’s a rather well documented fact that foreigners have been coming to live in Korea for hundreds of years and still do. Sure, most eventually become assimilated into Korean culture after a generation or two, but foreigners have certainly have left their mark. For that reason, I’d say that although Korea may be ethnically homogeneous, it wouldn’t be wrong to argue that this has more to do with common culture and language than common genealogy.
Other foreigners have left a strong mark on Korean history and culture. For example, Dr. Schofield, a Canadian, was one of the leading figures of the Korean Independence Movement.
Although Iowahawk’s Asse Hat Tale refreshingly may suggest otherwise, this does seem like more of a possibility in a Western Europe befuddled by the sort of moral vapidity for which the Jester of Canterbury speaks than in the US, where there is palpably more resistance to the idiocies of multiculturalism, even among many of the groups to which its proponents most try to appeal.
that’s about right, bum (referring to comment 62). but i wrote about “unintended bullshit” for one good reason: i think smart satire is what it is when or because the people doing it are aware of the kinds of things they’re implying. when they go beyond this stretch and cause disagreeable information that is false and problematic in its own right and is not just part of the willful exaggeration performed for the sake of humor, these satirists in effect become what they mean to criticize. truth is, this reversal, of becoming an accidental object of criticism in the act of criticism, is just the normal fare for kblog literature. (hey, if it were otherwise, nothing would be motivating me to post here…)
anyway, let me clarify one thing. where i write, “expats also frequently exaggerate the extent of the grievances they really are entitled to,” i don’t mean to say that expats are exaggerating the number of grievances that they’re entitled to. i’m saying that they’re exagerating the breadth of some grievance, ie that grievance which they are, i would agree, entitled to. i suppose there’s a diffference.
i’m not an angry kyopo. i’m just amused. see, if i were an angry kyopo, i would have pulled out a curt negation and simply noted how benicio’s post, yet again, demonstrates my other comments - with no smileys attached.
- someguyfromkorea, whenever i make comments like that, think “relatively speaking…”
“Western Europe can also become a Muslim Middle Eastern majority in the next 100 years.”
Anything can happen in the next 100 years. Few could have predicted in the 1860’s that a US bankrupted by years of civil war would possess the world’s largest economy 100 years later.
Well, I guess it’s more of the angry gyopo’s message to foreigners living in Korea- “Whitey, you have no reason or stance at all to gripe about anything in Korea, so just shut up!”
Isn’t this exactly what whitey’s been telling minorities in America for decades? Except you don’t hear much about whitey’s being lynched, victims of vicious hate crimes, forcibly removed into internment camps, or getting shot multiple times by overzealous Korean cops….
I guess what goes around comes around…
ABCDEFG?? Keep biting the hand that feeds you.. Clueless.
The news demonizes Westerners. The news is a microcasm of what has become so much more to create a society of hate. No gripes are being exaggerated.
My friend came here for a week. In a week, he was appalled at treatment of foreigners. BTW he is a Chinese American.
There are endless, endless stories of racist, belitting treatment of waegooks but you don’t get it so I won’t relay them.
Leave the country guys, encourage others not to come. It is the only way. Let them be China’s vassal state again
I assume by “what goes around comes around,” you’re not talking about turning Koreans into a minority in their own country.
#77
Ah. Well, guys. Looks like we finally have the model overreaction everyone can agree on. No satire, no humor, just plain old nasty stuff.
A little humor, my dear Zilkov, always with a little humor…
Expats are always reliably a ridiculous bunch. They write shit like “America: a paradise for Korean sex perverts” and wonder why kyopos aren’t exactly sympathetic.
OK, how about instead:
“America, a paradise for bear gall bladder poachers”, or
“America, a paradise for ‘Oriental massage’ therapists”.
Not looking for sympathy, just a bit a appreciation. We did after all set up a sex paradise for ya.
A tad of reciprocity is in order.
Right. Completely terrible of me.
Look at the bright side, though, Netizen Kim — at least AP wrote the little perv’s name with the family name last.
Except that such things have happened, although I suppose the closest analogy to an internment camp would have been what they did to the crew of the Sperwer way back when.
But make no mistake, whites have been lynched in Korea, the victim of hate crimes, and have been shot by police.
Now, in the U.S., whitey in America has also allowed minorities to become state governors, Cabinet members, etc. When I see the first South Asian born in Korea, or even the first “mixed-blood” Korean achieve something similar, maybe I’ll be able to see your point. Until then, what you do continues to be silly whining. The same racist shtick you started long ago on Usenet.
Well Netizen Kim, since it’s so important for you to dredge up America’s racist past. Let’s look at some shining examples of the Korean police & authorities.
There was that guy in Seoul who was shot in his apartment by the police over a misunderstanding. He was goofing around with his friend and crashed through a window, leaving him bloody.
The police were called by a neighbor and showed up. They see a foreigner covered in blood and shoot him. They never admitted they did anything wrong and he had to pay his own medical bills.
How about all the instances of women being raped or assaulted and the police doing nothing besides take a statement from the victim? They do absolutely no further investigation.
Let’s go even further. Want to talk about a heinous injustice by the police on a foreigner in Korea? Let’s take a look at Ali Khan:
http://free-ali.blogspot.com/2.....chive.html
a foreigner sentenced to life in prison for a murder he did not commit. The police/prosecutor’s won’t consider new testimony because it will show that they were wrong.
Yes, the U.S. is not perfect. Many of us readily admit to our faults, but for people like you to act like America is all evil while Korea is just fine- you are dreaming!
The point of my last post is that idiots always bring up the argument that “America is so racist because of the KKK, the white cops unjustified shooting of a minority, they got treated badly as a minority when they were growing up, etc.” as if we don’t know anything about it and they are going to educate us as to just how bad America is.
We know full well about it. We learn it in school, it’s all over the media when it happens and we are not proud of it. It’s something that we have been working against with laws and the public shaming of people who commit such acts. It still happens, but we are doing what we can to try and end it.
Does it sound like Korea is heading in the same direction? Not really.
They are content to keep up the logic that “Korea is still new at this globalization thing, we are a homogeneous people who aren’t used to minorities, we’re not ready for this multi-cultural thing”.
Well, my question is when are you going to be ready Korea. I mean it’s not the 19th century. When are you going to be ready to join the rest of the world?
I don’t see what was “excessive” about PP’s satire of the Korean media’s handling of recent cases. The media, not Korea at large, were his target and I’d say he nailed them.
Actually, I don’t believe “the rest of the world” has gotten with whole “multicultural” thing, either. It seems immigration-assisted demographic suicide is primarily a Western phenomenon.
Now wait a second, Robert… Unless you’re complaining that America, as a ‘white’ country, is being overrun by the ‘colored’ races, I hardly see how the story you linked to shows that ‘Americans’ are turning into a minority in their own country. After all, the story you linked to only states that ‘non-Hispanic white Americans’ will become a minority group, which explicitly excludes all the African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Native Americans… Even if, for your comfort, we go ahead and exclude all the first and 1.5 generation immigrants from that list, that still leaves ‘Americans’ in a pretty solid majority. And heck, if you really want to live in Aryan Disneyland, there’s always Utah — which will probably be majority white for quite some time to come (thank the Mormons.)
I wonder…since when were any minorities of any stripe, at any time in history, automatically exempt from any kind of discrimination, big or small, in any society, including America?
Since when did fair treatment of minorities become a reality without some kind of a struggle or a mass movement?
Something about whitey seems to make him think he should be exempt from all this.
Despite his own set of grievances, which I do not deny, let’s be real. It’s white privilege that landed them in Korea in the first place. The Engrish teaching industry is essentially Affirmative Action for melanin-deficient slackers unable to parlay their basket-weaving degrees from the local liberal arts community college to something more useful back home. You don’t hear too much about migrant white folks picking cabbage all day under a hot sun somewhere doing jobs that colored folks don’t want to do.
White people as a minority in Korea is a unending tale of hypocrisy wrapped in hubris. Where else do you get to see white folks regularly doing the same exact kinds of things that they’ve been bashing non-white minorities for back home?
Non-white minorities in Western nations are always under constant pressure from mainstream society to prove themselves. What makes whitey think he’s any different?
anyway, I thought it was somewhat cruel to poke fun at this kid, Park, who deserves a harsh sentence with lifetime “sex criminal” tracking.
I was also wondering if
A Mexican citizen can get an E-2 in the US, to teach Spanish.
How about a Spanish citizen getting a US visa to teach Spanish?
Yet, more relevant, can a ROK dude get a job in the US, with a legal visa for teaching Korean in the US?
How about a Japanese guy getting a visa to teach Japanese in the US?
English is a great language. Clearly the British have won this war.
There should be way lower demand for native French speakers.
Heaven forbid the day when native Mandarin speakers are in demand across the world.
Guard your military secrets, America.
A sword to the neck, for the Chinese spies!
Want to maintain majority in your OWN country?
Have babies. At least 2 per family. 3 to expand.
Stop buying into this liberal, socialist, crap.
Or, it is inevitable.
YOU WILL be a minority in your OWN country.
Plain and simple.
#92 - Yes, native speakers of several languages can and do get employment-based visas to come into the US and teach their language.
And the #1 reason that we may this is true - the fact that these expats are complaining about all these things, IN ENGLISH, on the internet where they get to write things like “I urge all Korean males everywhere to register themselves as sexual predators at their local police station. Do so now, before it’s too late!” in response to the true social grievances that they claim is as serious and real as it gets.
Another thing is — aren’t there going to be bunch of expats who will be staging a protest at VTECH campus this April to complain against Korea? Hillarious.
I must say I don’t like Netizen Kim’s “racist shtick” angle but, his provocations notwithstanding, it’s reasonable to say this thread is moving in that direction where, yeah, it’s kind of about what the white guys think vs what kyopos think.
That said, I wonder what a black person would feel about some of the comments going on here- you know, those about the “white countries,” “demographic suicide,” and such. Isn’t the Black American who has relatives or roots that can extend back as far as the 18th century more of an American than the white guy whose family has only been in America for 2 or 3 generations?
I’m just curious. I don’t have a problem personally with those comments but I suppose they’re can of worms in their own way.
@#89 and #90:
The essence of America isn’t tied to any particular race; hence, our changing demographics poses no threat. I think Americans and Canadians do a better job of integrating newcomers and redefining ourselves to accommodate those newcomers than do the older nations of Western Europe. Our immigrant mix of Latinos, Indians, and East Asians can adopt an American identity more easily than Europe’s Muslims, who feel pulled between Islamism and secular Europe. Muslim communities in the US seem more able to combine both an American and a Muslim identity, despite anti-Muslim bigotry. Girls in Dearborn (Michigan) schools feel comfortable wearing hijab not only in school but when playing sports.
Every day I teach young children from immigrant homes, children who seemlessly fit into our school community, children who I am comfident will embrace and cherish our shared values.
Europe has cause to worry about its unintegrated communities, but we do not. I think we do a darned good job of weaving immigrants into the tapestry of our nation.
96 is hogwash.
Muslim girls and boys don’t date, don’t drink, even socially.
they’re very much to themselves.
there are a few dudes named Hussein who drink, sleep around, etc, but I think those are the ones that would have been STONED to death back home.
Your refusal to register has been noted, the authorities have been contacted, and the surveillance begins.
Understand that your discomfort is comparatively insignificant when it comes to the goal of protecting the children.
With April - National Backlash Month - soon to come you’re likely still holed up in your bunker. The children had better not be there with you.
save for seouldout (#98), whose surveillance comments are hilarious, no one seems to have acknowledged slim (#88)’s reminder that the satire WAS more aimed at the korean media than it was at the korean people.
i guess that, aside from a few humourous remarks here and there, aimed at lightening the mood or defusing the situation, most of the posters here would rather continue engaging in race-baiting, overreacting, and (HT to seouldout) backlashing than backing down or realising that both sides of this argument have solid and bona-fide points.
or, rather, once HAD solid and bona-fide points. now it’s become just hilarious venom.
songai good points and additionally the economic aspect plays into US Muslims and European muslims
where ones in the US live rather comfortable lives, own businesses and are growing forces in their local communities
in europe not so much high percentages of unemployment, high crime, and little chance of being socially accepted outside of the slum areas they live in
one reason why the cardinal said it might be inevitable that Sharia law be recognized in Britian
absolutley absurd if you ask me and if a muslim wants to live the way of the Koran
and Sharia they can go live in Saudia Arabia not a western democracy!
Are there? Really?
Of course, you might also ask yourself, “Where did they learn to bitch like that?”
I really don’t have an interest in determining who is “more of an American.” I’m more interested in whether we really want to bring about demographic and cultural shifts — quite possibly significant shifts — through immigration. I really can’t speak for the African-American community, obviously, but since you brought them up, it does seem to me that said community has issues with mass Hispanic immigration, and I’d imagine — again, I didn’t look up poll numbers to back this up — that they’d question the need and desirability of creating a society that is 29% Hispanic and 10% Asian. Certainly, if Japan and Korea were getting flooded with immigrant numbers like that from, say, Russia and Thailand, they’d be asking themselves that question.
If anyone enjoys white privilege in Korea, its the lovely kyopo.
This isn’t about kyopos and whites though. Its about a nation’s racist, inflammatory, discrimitive behavior against foreigners.
To some extent, there are racist people in every country, but in Korea its built into the system whereas in the U.S. its not.
Oh, and I love the all English teachers in Korea are losers comment. You proved my point about this society’s demonization. Well done.
Foreigners: don’t stand up for yourself, or say anything negative about Korea, just shut your month and enjoy white privilege.
The same privilege that allows me to earn half as much as the locals for doing the same job or my secretary to get a computer and not me.
We need to eliminate the word kyopo and create two groups: Americans and Koreans.
You are, again, sadly deluded.
Were you not aware that the 9/11 plane hijackers enjoyed regular visits to strip clubs and bars during their time studying at flight school in the U.S.? Muslim hypocrisy regarding sexual behavior and use of intoxicants is widespread and well-known to most.