In addition to the reportedly inebriated American who fell from an apartment to his death in Busan, local Busan radio reports that a 40-year-old Canadian, also inebriated, was killed when he was hit by a train early yesterday morning.
Police believe the man, a university instructor in Daegu and a heavy drinker, had fallen asleep drunk on the tracks. He was hit by a Saemaul-ho at around 5:50am.
The report also notes that the two deaths indicate flaws in the English teacher-hiring process as applicants with mental disorders or substance abuse issues aren’t being screened out.
{ 74 comments… read them below or add one }
Good lord.. how drunk do you have to be to
a) Think it’s a good idea to sleep on train tracks, or
b) Not realize you are going to sleep on train tracks
Apparently I don’t drink enough.^^
Do they know he was sleeping and that this wasn’t another suicide?
5.50AM on a weekday? I mean, I guess if he was drinking until 5AM it could happen but still, wow.
I understand questioning the stability of the man who jumped from his apartment, but I don’t think Korea wants to get into a debate about the workforce and public intoxication…
How do they know he was a heavy drinker? Is one alcoholic stupor enough to warrant the label?
Until they discover the reason behind the first suicide, I think “mental disorder” is a bit premature. And unless they know something we don’t about the second’s private life, “substance abuse” is premature there, too.
Well, tragic deaths are as a good time as any for the Korean media to drag out their trusty old tropes about how unqualified foreign teachers are ruining the country. Two dead foreigners, and Korea is STILL the victim.
I’d have thought Koreans would have a bit more sympathy concerning suicide and alcohol abuse, but now I know better.
It’s a legitimate concern. Do you want suicidal drunks teaching YOUR children?
“Do you want suicidal drunks teaching YOUR children?”
That’s another reason why so many Korean-western couples move to the west once their children become school age.
I certainly wouldn’t want my children anywhere near these degenerates.
The latter guy didn’t teach children and if you consider getting drunk and passing out in a public degenerate, well, Korea’s probably not for you.
“Do you want suicidal drunks teaching YOUR children?”
Why not, with the high and seemingly wide-spread suicide rate here, it would seem we have suicidal drunks taking us to work in the morning, serving us lunch, sitting next to us in the office and pouring us drinks at night, why would/should the teachers be any different? Ow wait, i know.
But seriously, flip the situation round. If a foreigner had made the same comment about a couple of korean teachers who had killed themselves, pawi etc would rip them for it, here the national press does it and everyone nods their heads and tuts.
Please Korea, change your rules regarding qualified native foreign teachers. Decide what qualifications you want them to have and then make it law. Quite simple. Except we all know that wont happen for 2 reasons, 1. it will remove a lovely little scape goat you have, and 2. it is as yet not possible to make foreign native teachers korean, which it would seem is the most important qualification of all and one that negates all the other seemingly terrible things, such as drunkeness, etc.
Enjoy your friday everyone, its lovely out there
goldensky
First guy was a drunk teacher who stripped off his clothes and jumped to his death. I’d call that a degenerate. Second guy is also likely a suicide. If so, he’s also a degenerate and gets no sympathy from me. You’re supposed to pass out ON the subway car, not in front of it.
So I guess Korea must have one of the highest rates of degeneration in the world by your standards?
If a Korean teacher did exactly what that American teacher did. I’d say the same thing about him. Some people have no business being around children.
If “getting drunk and passing out in public” are the only criteria then yes. But I don’t even consider that to be all that bad. Getting drunk, stripping naked and killing yourself is pretty degenerate however.
Of course to truly determine which country has the “highest rates of degeneration in the world” you would have to complete the picture by considering things like murder, drug use, corruption, violent street crime, rates of incarceration, and a whole lot of other things. Apparently, you think some middle aged man napping on a park bench is the sign of a crumbling society. I try to see the bigger picture.
Lovely.
Obviously, it’s only degenerate when Westerners do it, because they are, after-all, well, degenerate – so sorry to say. Pure Koreans remain pure even when they are puking on your shoes, didn’t you know?
I don’t think that napping on a park bench (at night after three bottles of soju) is particularly degenerate. Nor do I think that napping on railway tracks after 20 bottles of beer is – though it is pretty bloody stupid.
I wonder what the media would have said had the deceased been qualified? Maybe they would have drawn attention to the unsuitable color of his hair, or perhaps the fact that he was wearing a dangerous pair of last season skinny jeans. One can only wonder
I don’t buy that someone can accidently lay down on cold hard steel tracks in the middle of the night (“gee this looks like a good place to take a nap”). He wanted to end it in spectacular fashion. And (for hoju_saram) as a matter of principle, I have no sympathy towards those who commit suicide. He took the easy way out.
I find it a bit hard to believe, too, but as we know all too well people find very interesting and unusual ways of passing out in this country.
It’s one thing to have no sympathy, another to call them degenerates. You’ve got no idea what the guy’s history is. He might have had severe clinical depression, he might have been the victim of child abuse, who knows? It’s a tragedy, not an opportunity for snide cheap-shots.
I’m wondering if the Keystone Cops down in Pusan have looked into any possible
traces of homicide and/or foul play. Come on guys, why the ef would a guy plant his ass way off the beaten track while totally wasted? One would think that you’d fall where you dropped, rather than making a conscious and concerted effort to climb down and around to the tracks, then pass out.
Of course it’s a suicide.
Not that the two are related, or that this is the appropriate time to bring it up, but since you mentioned it, there would be some local tradition for that — when streetcar service first began in Seoul, the streetcar operators were constantly on the lookout for the city’s homeless, who apparently were fond of using the cool metal tracks as pillows:
Not sure if this would apply in February, though…
http://www.archive.org/stream/seoulcapitalofko00holmuoft/seoulcapitalofko00holmuoft_djvu.txt
But were they qualified?
Even in those days the all-too-familiar refrain of Human rights! was raised as a defense to having to comply with law. The more things change…
That’s interesting Robert, moreso for the historical perspective on Korea’s culture of napping in public. Koreans just love to stretch out and sleep anywhere without worry. I think it speaks to a trusting and genteel society (may a little too trusting now that we have jackasses with cameras running around “documenting” Korea’s “problem”)
@hoju, yeah it’s a tragedy but I’m not gonna cry over it whenever someone offs himself. He didn’t respect his own life, why should I?
A bit harsh, but not totally far off, lots of people die every day, in numbers that far exceed the human endowment of sympathy and compassion. So we set priorities, in my world a 16 years old kid who die cos of an accident in some construction site in say India deserve more attention than a troubled middle-aged alcoholic man who couldn’t handle his demons.
File this under the shit happens category, it happens every day and it ain’t gonna stop happenin’
‘Koreans just love to stretch out and sleep anywhere without worry. I think it speaks to a trusting and genteel society (may a little too trusting now that we have jackasses with cameras running around “documenting” Korea’s “problem”)’
amen.
Koreans get drunk and they are trusting and genteel, a foreigner does it and hes an unqualified drunk that deserved it!
welcome to marmots hole
I don’t lump all suicides into the degenerate camp like tinyflowers does. Although many cases I may not sympathize with, I am rarely as flippant and callous about it, either. If someone kills themself because they were homesick, that seems a bit a bit pussified, but there are times when life gets too much to handle alone, especially if “it” hits you unexpectedly, as I suspect is the case with the first suicide.
There are no places (for foreigners) to get any help for such emotional crises in Korea. The first guy seemed obviously distressed about some very recent emotional trigger, he tried dealing with it with alcohol, and apparently tried to go back home at one point before being brought back to his apartment, and left alone to deal with whatever it was he was trying to (failing to) deal with. If this is the actual scenario, I’m not surprised the outcome.
When someone does something so out of character (suddenly stop going to work, go on a 3 day drinking binge, public belligerence), wouldn’t a normal person try to find out what’s going on? By all accounts, no one did, and just assumed “well, he must have a mental disorder and he is alcoholic”. All that from three days of going off the rails despite (to my knowledge) no previous problems or complaints in the years he’s lived here.
I don’t know what triggered his distress, but I have a bit more sympathy for him simply because in his case, had someone tried to find out what his demons were and attempted to HELP the guy, his suicide may never have happened in the first place.
Whatever the circumstances and causes which led to these two men’s deaths, I find the news reports incredibly insensitive bordering on callous. My condolences to the two men’s friends and family. I always think it’s a horrible situation when people die far from the comforts of home, friends and family. A shame they seemingly couldn’t find something to keep them going, tomorrow is always another day with endless possibilities.
Was Korea’s treasured soil damaged by the foreigner’s fall?
Were there any signs warning of “Danger!” and “Don’t Pass Out Here!” and “Steel Rails Are NOT Pillows? In English?
And do you know that BAC of 0.341 places one in the “stupor” classification of intoxication? Now ya do.
One wonders had there been more blackout Korea photographers this tragedy may have been avoided.
I love one sentence that sums it all up perfectly. Not bad, Granfalloon. Had the 1st and 3rd sentences been omitted entirely that post would have been outta sight DY-NO-MITE!
Lets not forget, it is February/March and its the biggest time that if a teacher is going to do something rash, they will do it now.
February, is when most 1-year contracts are finishing, schools are not paying the 12-month bonus properly and ripping money from foreign teachers who worked hard all year, and refusing to re-sign contracts with teachers for pathetic reasons.
some foreign teacher in Korea who worked hard all year are going to get upset about this.
As for tinypeni** and (her yet unspoken friend on here – pawitrash) saying that these human beings are “degenerates” just goes to show that they think they are HIGH and MIGHTY and that their blood is the MOST PURE and everyone else deserves to die on a railway track, because “HOW dare a “degenerate” teach one of their PURE ROYAL children”.
lets not forget the teachers who worked hard all year and now they are being ripped of their money – in “Korean customary procedure”
Solution is ? We ask the Korean government to fund a crisis center for homesick expats ? We go around asking with a straight face to donate to the lonely depressed expat trust fund ? How about setting some privately-run counseling center (it doesn’t seem like a great business model to me) ?
I hated living abroad, i really did: long brutal winters, lack of sleep, loneliness, lack of language skills and no local really ever gave a shit about it and guess what ? They were right, locals in your host country have their own shit to deal with and they just see foreigners as a potential annoyance to minimize or in the best case scenario as an odd curiosity.
Get used to it, people are too busy with their own mortgage payments to give a shit about the plight of Johnny Expat, what sounds like callous comments to you it is simply a downright legitimate reaction to protect their own interests (in this case the quality of the education system).
This world belongs to whoever is strong enough to walk on it every day, Might is right, victrix causa deis placuit
@34 I’d at least allow pawi to say something stupid and tasteless and probably racist before you jump all over him. You know he will.
And when you pick on tinyflowers you are bullying the weakest, most pathetically defenseless member of the current MH cast of characters. Remember: Korean drunks lying in their vomit are “productive members of society” while non-Koreans are … whatever label a tadpole in a well who thinks he’s looking at the “big picture” decides to apply.
The attitudes that most people hold on here are truly sickening. To think that people are selfish enough to believe that because they don’t agree with suicide therefore he deserves no sympathy. Somebody has died and somebody within our community, does that not warrant some sort of sympathy, the cause of death is surely not important, do you not think English teachers here do not get enough rubbish from the Korean press and general population without being kicked again from us? Nobody expects people to hold a candle lit vigil but common courtesy and general empathy for another human being wouldn’t go amiss. I think the people who cannot display this empathy at the death of another (stranger to them or not) are the ones that should not be allowed near children, after all an inability to empathise is a trait of a psychopath. Shame on all who callously commented and let’s hope someone you know doesn’t die and is then badmouthed in a public arena. Absolutely barbaric.
Such tragic stories. Brings back memories of Shawn Matthews’ death.
seouldot @33 – not to stray too far off topic, but that Lee vs. CTA appeal is quite a story, which I inexplicably read to the end. My mind’s still reeling over this hair-splitting distinction: (a) Does the hot 3rd rail represent a condition of CTA’s property? (b) Or was CTA conducting (pun not intended) an activity on the property? They concluded the former, which was apparently a key point in their decision. The dissenting opinions were interesting, as well, if you can hang in that long.
Drunken stupor non withstanding, did you read HOW Mr. Lee died? Yikes.
The Konglish guy makes ma wanna pull a Sperwer (when he’s outright annoyed with wjk) and get myself a nice big ban…
Well i’ll try to settle somewhat in the middle: hey Konglish boy guess what ? I don’t give a shit about the drunkard who croaked, one less left in this world.
I also have a 10 years old son i have raised mostly on my own, now tell me if you dare i shouldn’t be around him you fucking filthy piece of hagwon trash
Word association.
‘Blue?’ ‘Sky.’
‘July?’ ‘Rain.’
‘Hate?’ ‘Japan.’
‘Degenerate?’ ‘Westerner.’
‘Knee?’ ‘Jerk.’
During the 88 Olympics, when Carl Lewis brushed off reporters at Kimpo Airport, the Hankyoreh called him a “degenerate American” (according to Ian Baruma), which is amusing considering it was the trophy winner at the Hani’s ‘most hated’ awards – Park Chung-hee – who really championed that connection in the mid-1970s, as this February 1975 KT editorial illustrates. Though I imagine it goes back further than that.
February 1976, sorry.
YangachiBastardo,
What the heck have you been doing between the hours of 8:32 and 10:52 p.m.? Have you been drinking Soju? Whatever, just don’t kill yourself.
No worries Bastardo, you’re a minority in the eyes of westerners in the west so you get the benefit of the doubt(higher and passing grades at universities for various or numerous reasons). So go ahead and continue your ranting.
Konglish2,
You’re correct, nobody has any idea about there final demise. They ought to hope someone doesn’t spit on them or their grave if their life ends sooner than expected. Even if everyone lives their lives fully, nobody knows where they might end up and whoever thinks they are better than any of those who have supposedly committed suicide, really don’t know diddly squat — Wills and testaments be damned.
Fullslab: i apologise for being a bit whacked out but i’ve been taken off my meds, last i slept less than 3 hours and actually went on a ranting for a message that wasn’t even directed at me…said so dude between dubious hinting at minority status (actually i look very central European, generally people abroad take me for a Polack or some other shit like that) and even more dubious comparisons between Gaddafi and the general Korean populace, you seem kinda out of it yourself. If you’re really interested i can tell you i spent only 8 months in a Guido community college where i spent most of my time playing cards and where i passed only an entry level macroeconomics exam with the miminum passing grade.
Not worth the muscular energy involved in the act of spitting
Bulgasari,
How dare you mention the 1988 Olympics, here is the History Channel(MUST SEE — “Tremendous hostility toward Americans and it’s media, very tense atmosphere, Pummel, Pummel Pummel, American toying with Korean, American boxer hit Korean boxer 2 and 3 times more often, wasn’t even close, or so was thought, then a Korean volunteer snuck over where he shouldn’t have been, even after the rip-off, Park was embarrassed…”)
http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=cJYBV9BXQNY&feature=related
Does anyone know the name of this announcer???
I’m surprised nobody’s tried to work in a Blackout Korea reference here.
Hey, Koreans have every right to demand teachers who actually show up to work and don’t kill themselves. What he did was a selfish and degenerate act.
No one, least of all me, said that Korea has to build an expat crisis center, or set up expat trust funds, or private expat counseling center.
I just noted that there are no places for foreigners in Korea to get help should the need ever arise. There are very few places for Koreans to turn to, nevermind. Nowhere did I say expats in Korea should get special treatment, but it would be nice that they GET treatment, if ever necessary.
It would be good to see some foreign language service in the facilities that already exist. Such language services already exist when it comes to emergency services (police, fire, ambulance). It’s not much of a stretch to extend one step more.
It’s not about treating homesickness or boo hoo I don’t speak the language and I feel lonely or pre-existing psychological conditions (the latter of which should disqualify them from getting a visa in the first place, IMO), but genuine unexpected distress that most people are unprepared to deal with.
Life doesn’t go perfectly for everyone, and it’s always nice to have a net to catch you should you one day get taken off at the knees. I’m sure, even without the existence of services that might have helped him, had someone sat the first young man down and talked to him–or better yet, LISTENED–a tragedy may have been avoided.
Yeah, traash, I’m sure that’s why this guy stopped showing up to work and killed himself. Would YOU re-sign this guy to another contract if it was your children’s education at stake? They’re the ones who truly deserve our sympathy here, not the irresponsible losers who take their own lives.
I agree with konglish2.
Don’t know what drove these people to kill themselves but it is sad. I’m sure the reality for the two persons here was a mixture of hopelessness, foolishness, stupidity, depression, and decadence, the loss of second chances.
My condolences to their friends and families.
LOL I just noticed slim’s little hissyfit. He doesn’t dare address me directly ever since I put him in his place. He’s apparently still smarting over that. Lick those wounds in private man, it’s pathetic.
I actually said that an inability to empathise with the death of another human being is a psychopathic tendency, you may take that any way you like, not that you shouldn’t be around your own son, although I certainly would not let you near mine. You seem to have the morals and emotions of a brick wall.
As an afterthought I do seemed to have touched a nerve Yangachi.
@38:
I think Shawn Matthews was a totally different situation. I mean, there’s no doubt he committed suicide. For all we know, this teacher may have just passed out at an inopportune location. That said, Matthews’ suicide really shook me up. I never met him, but I did exchange a few emails with him while we were both in Korea, and I followed his blog for over two years until the day he died. What an unfortunate waste of a young and promising life. Does anyone else remember him or his hilarious blog called the “Korea Life Blog”, IIRC?
You did for personal reasons that need not to be discussed here, as they’re really boring and pathetic. I apologise as there was no need to pour dumb kerosene on an already flaming thread
Never received a bigger compliment than this, thank you
Hey, lighten up folks. Maybe this will make ya’ll feel better:
I’m now officially a fan of fellow Chicagoan Laurie Anderson (saw her on Fallon last night *doing* this):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xBUXTVVDDw
I can’t believe anyone needs to say this, but is there any evidence, any evidence whatsoever, that foreign teachers are more prone to alcoholism than their Korean counterparts?
I’ll not bother asking the question about suicide. We all know damn well what the statistics say on that score.
So, putting aside how disgustingly distasteful it is to use someone’s death as a chance to spread a little scaremongering and xenophobia, the Korean media is also making allegations that are totally unsupported. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Adaptable Human Solutions is a Seoul-based consultancy offering expats confidential psychological counseling services in the English language. Possibly French, too — I think they’re mostly Canadians.
What would it say if one or both of these guys didn’t have a history of alcohol abuse, or at least no history of doing very rash or stupid things while under the influence, or no history of public drunkeness, before coming to Korea? If that were the case it would be interesting to see the reaction of the Korean press to one of us writing an editorial in a western paper warning people of the dangers of working in Korean society, and what its workplace environment and culture of public drunkeness can do to people, using these guys as examples.
This does not surprise me.
My condoleces to their families. There but for the grace of God went I, when I was younger.
Thanks Brendon. Good info to know. The vast majority of people won’t need their services, but it’s good to know there is a place to go if things in your life go tits up temporarily.
Of course, lack of privacy and being labeled a mental patient are different issues to be dealt with later. Baby steps.
“He doesn’t dare address me directly ever since I put him in his place.”
You don’t have the wits or the wisdom to put anyone here in his/her place — unless its wjk, who is a mildly retarded Korean version of Glenn Beck, or pawi, who is a simple-minded nationalist who only has 3 thoughts in his head, each involving an ethnic group he disdains. And you agree with those two on most issues, so there will likewise be no chance of you putting them in their places. You are the weakest link, exactly as I said above.
The world view and vibe you project here is that of a callow, late-teen K-chauvinist with far better English than Koreasentry but not much more to say.
Not that there’s really anything wrong with that, but don’t you have a Justin Bieber movie to queue up for tonight with the other dateless dudes in the dorm?
“callow, late-teen K-chauvinist with far better English than Koreasentry but not much more to say”
LOL. I wonder if it’s occured to him that amongst those who go by the title ‘Native English Teacher’ in Korea and have a surname starting with ‘K’, the most common name is probably Kim? Kang would be up there too. For all we know he could be denegrading someone with the exact same demographic profile as himself.
Yeah but you’re one of the few, you may be surprised to find out how credulous the world has become
(?!) So, what we’ve been witnessing for the past many months is you on your meds?
Saw that you’re not a fan of L7. Here’s an 80′s song that’s fashionable to boot. Très bien. Ms. Jones is one of my guilty pleasures. Her and Amuro Namie.
Counseling at Adaptable Human Solutions, presumably, is private. I don’t think they’re running groups, although I’ve heard from counselors that group therapy is also helpful. One of the advantages of seeking counseling from another expat is the probability the counselor subscribes to Western notions of privacy.
I fit right in this motley crue of sportsbar political analysts/investment bankers/historians/misfit kids/mma fighters/raving nationalists/military intelligence experts/effete academics etc. etc. making up the humanity of the comments section. Anyway if you’re really interested i had the bad habit of mixing meds with booze and occasionally worse shit.
The first link you posted prove there’s hope even for specimens of the alternateen generation, loved it.
J-pop i’m not sure, some of it is ok:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkj5qUcr8ds
hehe
slim, there’s a reason everyone ignores you here. I think I’ll do the same. Keep on yapping you little git.
He must have been out of his mind. I understand getting totally hammered. But to that extent….wow.
Also, if the guy did have some mental issues…how come they never asked about it or did anything about it. Those things should be screened because it can have a big effect later on.
I guess one thing we can learn from this is…to stay away from train tracks if you get drunk.
Will “psychological evaluation” soon be added to the stack of documents (all with proper “apostille” of course)* required to teach English in Korea?
* of course an actual teaching license or education-related degree will still not be included among the ever-growing stack of required/ authenticated documents.
WeikuBoy, we don’t even know if these two people were legally employed or what, if any, kind of visas they had.
The person who jumped from the apartment building had been employed at a hagwon since December; the person who died on the train tracks had apparently been working at the university since 2009. If they were working illegally, you can bet we would have heard about it. As far as visas go, there’s rarely any mention of visa types in these articles. The three times wanted murderers from the US or Canada have been caught working as teachers here, there have been calls to strengthen the recruiting system but no mention of the fact that it was because they were non-E-2 that they were able to teach in hagwons.
“WeikuBoy, we don’t even know if these two people were legally employed or what, if any, kind of visas they had.”
What difference does that make? The end result of these tragic events and others like it is and will always be more barriers to lawful employment for qualified foreigners (as the Koreans themselves define “qualified”).
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