Matt Lamers, the very soft-spoken gentleman who edits the Expat Living section of the Korea Herald, was apparently stabbed with a broken beer bottle by two college-age Korean men in Hongdae.
Fortunately, Matt suffered nothing more than a cut arm, but it could have been much worse. I don’t mean to slander the Hongdae area, but it seems to me this kind of thing happens there relatively frequently.
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Matt: I hope the cuts were not too deep and there will be no physical scars. Please take care. Going forward, please assume that you will be attacked if a similar situation arises. It is always best to be prepared (in Korea, you really should learn the right way of breaking a beer bottle so that you have a functioning defense weapon at your disposal within seconds; yes there is a wrong way and a right way).
This does not surprise me. I have Korean native friend who took out two white American friends who were in town to participate in a Taekwondo tournament in Seoul. My friend took them to the same area for some Korean BBQ. They, of course, were talking in English. It was only a matter of time before they attracted unwanted attention from five local college punks. My friend, who is also a black belt, had to fight these xenophobic assholes and, not surprisingly, my friend and the 2 Americans beat the shit out of the 5 Korean college kids.
But as soon as these college students realized that having 2 extra bodies were doing them no good, they started playing the victim card. My friend, knowing what the Korean police is like, fled the scene with the Americans barely ahead of the arrival of the cops.
Korea is fast becoming an inexcusable country. Really, really sad.
The fantasized perils of US beef will be forgotten as the netizens’ rage over this crime surges into the streets. Look for the candlelight protests anytime now.
I witnessed a drunken Korean guy come into a well known expat bar in Gumi once and just start swinging at every foreigner within sight, including women. When the dust had settled, two guys and three women needed minor medical attention due to cuts, bruises and one girl who he kicked in the knee. When the cops came and tried to sort things out, friends of the drunk guy tried to say the foreigners who held their buddy down waiting for the police had started the whole thing. Luckily the police believed the Korean bar owner and no foreigner was taken to jail. To make a long story short, the police spent the next hour convincing everyone who had been assaulted to take pity on the guy because he’d had a hard life, his parents were divorced and he was unemployed. He was let go without any repercussions from his actions.
From my experience, foreigners don’t have any rights or legal recourse in Korea so Matt was probably correct in leaving the scene. These instances are rare but do occur especially when the locals are in hysteria over perceived threats to their pride like what is going on now with the US beef craziness. It can be a great place to live most of the time, but despite its economy, infrastructure and standard of living, Korea is still a backwards country when it comes to logic, self protection and legal rights.
“…Korea is still a backwards country when it comes to logic, self protection and legal rights.”
Other than *that* Mrs. Lincoln – how did you enjoy the play?
Without self-protection and legal rights, a non-Korean needs to seriously consider if the risk of living in Korea is worth it.
Getting attacked by a dumb-ass local: that can happen in any country.
Getting attacked by a dumb-ass local, then have it be the victim’s fault, then being jailed/fined/other for being a foreigner: happens in Korea, almost by special design.
There should be a database for instances like this; maybe even a wiki. That is if there isn’t already.
Primarily to serve as way to document things not covered in the media for posterity, partly to let foreigners know where not to go (i.e. Hongdae) and partly to quantify police inaction.
Mr. Expat, why oh why do you provoke them?
If you’re going to be attacked shout, “AIDS!” The fear of your blood may stymie an attack.
Could get you deported, though.
Hey, I live right next to the famous 떡볶이 stand near the Buy the way. Even since last year, Hongdae has changed a lot. It seems all the foreigners are steadily moving from Itaewon to here. Damn annoying actually. Near the tinpan, gogo’s area it’s like you’re in the States. Yes I’m gyopo too.
Shame is unbearable to the average Korean. Having a nagging wife, a kid that is not “smart” enough to attend Harvard, an uncle who likes to molest the kids, a son that likes to sexually assault his class mates, a thief for a husband, a pathological liar in the family, the list is well known to any society. BUT in Korea admitting these things is shameful and brings dishonor, so the police and family do whatever it takes to sweep such things under the rug. It is an ancient philosophy that needs to change with the times. Do we even have economic transparency in Korea yet? Are people willing to follow simple traffic laws? We need to identify the disease, not just treat the symptoms. Solutions > rants.
‘Korea is fast becoming an inexcusable country. Really, really sad.’
‘There should be a database for instances like this; maybe even a wiki. That is if there isn’t already.’
‘Getting attacked by a dumb-ass local, then have it be the victim’s fault, then being jailed/fined/other for being a foreigner: happens in Korea, almost by special design.’
yeah, let me know when koreans get to lynching and burning down your churches, ok? i think i’m gonna write jet magazine.
Or shooting up your universities.
‘Or shooting up your universities.’
you seem fixated on the guy. why?
you’re betrayed by your oft-quoted insult, dogbert.
Just glad to hear that Matt wasn’t too badly hurt. The assholes that did this deserve to spend a few years in jail.
Korean police has been declawed. They have been so heavily criticized for human rights violations and suppression by the Korean media that they try not to offend the suspects lest they charge the police with abuse.
A Perfect example here, where riot cops must stand there and take verbal and physical abuse. They get clobbered so hard with steel pipes from behind that one of them goes down on the ground. Yet the commander has to shout to him, do not react and lie there still!. The attacker not only gets away with it, he is free to wack away more at the kid who’s doing his military duty.
Riot cops can’t even use fire hoses to disperse the mob that’s trying to rush the Presidential place without being accused of police abuse and democratic rights violations.
Korean police is ineffective because there is no pride in serving in the police. They are humiliated, underpaid, and disrespected by the society. The law protecting the criminals doesn’t help either.
From the police point of view in Korean.
http://news.chosun.com/site/da.....00826.html
‘Korean police is ineffective because there is no pride in serving in the police. They are humiliated, underpaid, and disrespected by the society. The law protecting the criminals doesn’t help either.’
very true. cops here in the states are to be feared. you don’t ever mess with them.
you’re going to be in some serious trouble with possible jail time if you ever did. and if you wield a pipe, you gonna get shot.
“if you wield a pipe, you gonna get shot.”
MBC 9′oclock news: “Cops shoot and kill innocent candle light protester, thousands of citizen protesters came out to protest this human rights abuse and demanded that the president apologize to the people and fire the police chief. They also demanded the arrest of the murderer. People are now afraid that Korea is going backwards into dictatorship where citizens are murdered for rightfully protesting for their rights”.
#1: “Matt: I hope the cuts were not too deep and there will be no physical
scars.”
I agree with the first part but respectfully disagree with the second. If you are going to have to go through the pain of being stabbed, you should at least have the reward of a cool scar, especially since it is not on the face.
I could have had a really cool small scar above my right eye where a falling piano board busted open a wound, but the doctor who stitched me up was too skilled.
Sorry to hear that Matt. Hope you get well soon.
I do seem to be hearing these stories rather often. That being the case, I was riding the tube the other day (I usually walk or cycle to and from work) when two heavy-set nasty looking guys entered the carriage and made directly for me:
Leaning next to the doors I thought (being a peace-loving kind of guy) “Oh crap, here we go…”
One of them pulled out a pack of ciggies and handed the other a smoke; I looked at them. Guy holding the ciggie leans drunkenly against me, laughs and slurs something like (excuse my poor Korean, “걱정마임마…난여기서않피우려고해”
He then pulls out a bar of chocolate, breaks of a chunk and pushes it with his big sweaty smoky hand into my mouth and proceeds to get off at the next stop, shaking my hand en route.
That was both a very welcome and very unwelcome chunk of Hersheys…
That is nothing compared to the Korean micro-wave organized stalking teams
@11: I bring up Cho Seung-hui for the same reason you always bring up “The Expat”, hypocrite.
Actually, Cho Seung-hui serves a number of purposes:
1. He gives lie to the myth of the “model minority”;
2. He shows that diversity is not our strength, but our weakness, exposing another lie; and
3. He is a poster boy for more stringent immigration controls (he was known by his relatives, before emigrating, as mentally disturbed).
Korean cops don’t do anything???
http://news.naver.com/hotissue.....&seq=4
How fucking apropos… I hope to god there’s a write-up in the Expat Living section.
Hey Korea Herald readers, wanna know what Expat Living is like in Korea?
Have a night out and get stabbed by the locals!
If this keeps up they’ll have to change the name to the Expat Dying section.
I’m surprised the weapon of choice wasn’t a hammer.
Robert! Why are you posting this?
Shouldn’t we just laugh it off? Shouldn’t we be making fun of Matt for being so reactionary?
Shouldn’t we tell Matt to sing “kumbaya?” and ridicule as you have suggested?
jay h makes a good point. He just got stabbed in the arm after all. I mean I can count the number of recent unprovoked attacks on foreigners on one hand. And besides in the States he would have been shot. Foreigners need to just buck up. A stab or two probably ain’t gonna kill you.
Oh my God, jay h, someone, call the UNSC! Get peacekeepers in here! It’s a fucking genocide!
“Oh my God, jay h, someone, call the UNSC! Get peacekeepers in here! It’s a fucking genocide!”
Well, perhaps one day you will be assaulted out of the blue and for no reason by Korean men. I’ve been. My friends have been. If you feel a little shocked and bitter after, we’ll be happy to remind you that since there’s no genocide happening here, you must be over-reacting. Things appear to be getting uglier and uglier Robert – your visual age and hanbok may not protect you from attack indefinitely.
Societies do not usually turn violent to outsiders overnight. There is usually a long slope of public & media vilification and incremental violence. At most of the early and middle stages, it is possible to say that any one incident is meaningless.
I believe since 2002 Korea has been sliding down this slope. It can be persuasively argued that foreign residents in Korea are de facto legally defenseless and can be robbed or assaulted with impunity.
Powergoose said: “yeah, let me know when koreans get to lynching”
Oh, it’s only a drunken incident away, Pawi. Korean acceptance of the legitimacy of any violence perpetrated on non-Koreans is in spitting distance of that stage, I think. If it hasn’t happened already and been covered up.
To “triplea” I’ve also noticed an increase in violence from all sides in Hongdae over the past 18 months to two years.
Troubling.
# 1 jude …”these college students … started playing the victim card. My friend, knowing what the Korean police is like, fled the scene with the Americans barely ahead of the arrival of the cops.”
I think the solution is, to make sure the college students would not be in any kind of shape to call the police (say for a couple of days
, until one was well long gone 
I hope Matt has a speedy recovery, and is able to remind himself of how many really good Koreans there are out there as well.
#24
Robert I think you mean the NHRCK (National Human Rights Commission of Korea) not the UNSC (United Nations Security Council).
(A UNSC would never make it with the Chinese veto after all)
The NHRCK http://www.humanrights.go.kr/english/index.jsp actually has quite a stockpile of such complaints. Documentation is important.
But thanks for showing you do care about this issue.
By the way, don’t you think your avatar is inappropriate considering your position on how overstated all this anti-foreigner discussion is? As I recall it comes from a website explaining how dangerous foreigners are to Koreans.
Yeah. Badforeigner’s right [irony]I demand you change your avatar immediately![/irony]
seriously though, chin up, Matt. Shitty thing to happen; hope you’re doing well.
-roboseyo
I agree, your avatar belies your contention that Koreans aren’t schooled into believing foreigners are a threat and therefore deserving of being attacked. They are and you know it — so you show it.
I think it’s as funny as the next person (for example roboseyo whose avatar has another of these delights) but we all laugh cuz we know how truly it shows what is thought about us.
Yes, get well soon.
Robert, your response is the best. Since I don’t want to “laugh off” violence against foreigners and ridicule complainers, you call me an overreactor and try to belittle me (comment 26).
Because I want to question why a society would stab someone just for being who he is, I am a horrible racist.
If I read your comments and mine, it is quite clear you are the overreactor with your calls for the U.N. and genocide.
In all of your years trying to look like a mad man by wearing a Hanbok, maybe somewhere along the line you actually lost your mind.
Yes, that does make you a horrible racist. A “society” didn’t stab anyone. Two individuals did. The fact that you’ve blamed an entire society says a lot.
correction. I was typing too fast..
Why would two people in Korean society stab this man for being a waeguk?
And why would almost everyone who comments on this blog have a story of violence against them because they are foreigners.
I’m sorry, but I’m no racist and I resent your anti-race baiting race baiting rhetoric.
Marmot, I recall you saying something like, ‘if it was Canadian or British beef do you think you’d see such a reaction?’
If it weren’t a foreigner do you think the person would have been stabbed with a bottle?
If you can honestly answer yes as easily as you did above, fine and I really hope you are right.
But my guess is you can’t because you know the chances are it was a racially motivated crime.
and by “above” I mean the comment you made about jay h being a horrible racist.
I don’t recall saying it wasn’t racially motivated. It seems like it was.
First off, I’m not sure if almost everyone who comments on this blog has a story of violence. Secondly, for those that do, you’d have to ask them about the circumstances surrounding their incidents. Probably for the same reason that almost every Korean I’ve spoken to who has been to the West talks of having experienced ugly situations. Which is to say, within any population, there’s going to be racist assholes.
Yes, you are. And if you don’t like my “anti-race baiting race baiting rhetoric,” there are plenty of blogs I’m sure would appreciate your readership.
All I can say is you seem quite clueless, and I don’t comment here for you. You have a lot of people that read this blog. Also, you take and collect material on this blog, it is not exactly readership.. But funny if you think it is.
Fine, you are a wonderful namecaller, but I’d say if I am a racist, then according to a lot of your comments that I have read over the past couple of years, you must be one too.
Your conception of a racist makes us all racists!
In the words of your comrade Pawi, “silly, silly excee.”
That’s too bad, because you’ve just been banned. Partly because you’re a troll, but mostly because I just don’t like you.
Sheesh, even Pawi knows enough to be polite to the host.
I hope Matt makes a speedy recovery.
I’ve always thought that while Korea has more than its fair share of racists, for the most part, their bark tends to be worse than their bite. Incidents like this one make me think that some of the hardcore thugs are discovering their bite, which is a pretty scary precedent.
# 19,
The majority of mass murders in the U.S. have been white.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Koresh
Charles Whitman, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold even had vastly more firepower than Cho.
@41: True. And the vast majority of instances of traffic-related deaths, environmental pollution, child molestation, etc. that occur in Korea are committed by Koreans, yet the Korean press and public opinion seem to stir up the idea that foreigners are predominantly responsible for such things far out of proportion to their numbers.
The U.S. media did not do that in relation to Cho, nor (to the surprise of many Koreans) did the U.S. public.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, as they say.
# 42,
Very good point dogbert. Xenophobia sucks and Korea should grow up in that regards.
Way to handle criticism there.
Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill. This english teacher Matt could easily have avoided injury by improving his Korean language ability and demonstrating great cultural awareness. To a westerner a broken bottle is often perceived as a threatening object of violence, whereas in Korea it signifies a much deeper cultural significance.
Bottles were manufactured in Korea thousands of years before they were in the west, and traditional manufacturing techniques peaked in the late koryo dynasty.
If this english teacher had demonstrated greater appreciation for these facets of his socio-historic environment he could well of avoided what is arguably a self inflected injury. blaming two innocent Koreans (who just happen to be untraceable) who by a matter of coincidence are alleged to have wielded the weapon unprovoked is a typical cop out.
Whats the true story mr english teacher with a column?
“To a westerner a broken bottle is often perceived as a threatening object of violence, whereas in Korea it signifies a much deeper cultural significance.
Bottles were manufactured in Korea thousands of years before they were in the west, and traditional manufacturing techniques peaked in the late koryo dynasty. If this english teacher had demonstrated greater appreciation for these facets of his socio-historic environment he could well of avoided what is arguably a self inflected injury.”
You know sw I’ve read your posts on several issues and valued them because I thought you added an important and often neglected perspective on things. This latest comment, however, will remind me to just scroll right on past what you’ve written. You’ve lost whatever credibility I had mistakenly attributed to you.
@WTF
I’m sorry to alienate one of my few fans, I had no idea I was so appreciated. Most people tell me to go and hang myself. Please hang with me, I’ve downloaded a Language Pack from Microsoft so next time I type a comment you may not need to go to VIEW -> ENCODING -> DIMWIT for sarcasm to display correctly on your monitor.
sw, hey thanks for that download you’re a life saver. I installed it on my browser couldn’t find the DIMWIT tab (This may be my own fault cuz I’m kind of a luddite when it comes to all this techie stuff) but I’m seeing the “TASTELESS & INAPPROPRIATE”, and “EGOMANIACAL BANTER FUELED BY BURNING INFERIORITY COMPLEX” buttons just fine – I gave them a shot and they seem to have cleared up my earlier misunderstanding.
Cheers for the help, now I’ll be better prepared for your next post.
Im sorry WTF, I presumed that nobody would be offended by the comment. I dont know the guy nor I expect to, I had nothing to do with the assault. I dont care, i used his misfortune for a cheap laugh.
Perhaps this would be more fitting with your higher sensibilities.
I’m beginning to think swlee is a parodist.
@ Brendon;
Just because you don’t agree with my opinion, doesn’t mean you can go around calling people names, people who do that encourage senseless argument and eventually someone is banned and serious discussion aimed at resolving issues of concern facing Korea in the modern world will have less opportunity to be resolved here at this blog . So keep you pie trap shut.
swlee — I’m guessing that you don’t know what parodist means, then, if you think I’m calling names. Besides, would you say that your comments #45 and #47, to name the most recent contributions in this thread, are in the noble spirit you claim?
Brendon: You’re expecting principled consistency from a cog of the borg?
I believe all humans are fallible, including myself and my fellow borg. To think otherwise is arrogant.
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