If you’re bored of the Seoul torch relay violence stories, skip this post. If not, read on. If you’re a C-borg linking in, be forewarned: you won’t like what you’re about to read.

Chinese netizens aren’t too pleased to hear that the Korean government plans to arrest and deport violent Chinese demonstrators who attacked Tibet and North Korean human rights advocates during the torch relay, and they’re launching a PR counterattack with photos and Youtube videos. Circulating on the internet are collections of photos dissected to prove that Koreans are lying about allegations of violence by Chinese demonstrators. It isn’t only nutizen chatter. Some material appears to be sourced from printed newspapers, probably daily tabloids. The characters are simplified, so they may be mainland publications.

The image of members of a certain unnamed Chinese student association in a large southeastern port city in Korea attacking the man on the bicycle with their flags reminds me of this historic photo, but the Chosun Ilbo made a different connection.

It is actually the Chinese who appear to be doctoring photos by whiting out the face of one attacker and the name of the Chinese student association on the back of the t-shirt of the other attacker.

Near-sighted C-borgs apparently can’t tell the difference between Free Tibet demonstrators and those who advocate on behalf of North Korean refugees, branding anyone who protests against anything related to China as fanhuafenzi(反华分子), or “anti-Chinese partisans.” Those who are not with the Chinese government are against the Chinese people in the worldview of the C-borgs.

MH commenters aren’t the only ones who’ve noted that violent protest isn’t unusual in Korea. The Chinese have, too. And in the Chinese blogosphere, all your blog are belong to us (thanks, Elgin) as posts like the one titled “比CNN还卑劣！韩国媒体造谣中伤中国留学生” (More Despicable Than CNN! Korean Media Fabricates Rumors to Stab Chinese Overseas Students) have gone viral on dozens of websites.

I’d like to remind our fanhuafenzi commenters that C-borgs like those who attacked peaceful demonstrators and those who defend the attackers are not representative of the 1.3 billion people who live in China and that some Chinese students were injured in the fights. And Fanhuafenzis, take heart. At least you’re not KKK red neck thugs like Jack Cafferty.

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The Seoul Shinmun reports that as the number of foreigners in Korea skyrockets, more and more foreigners are getting screwed legally due to language and cultural differences.

Case #1: Mr. M, a 33-year-old Canadian English teacher in Ulsan, helps a drunk bar patron who fell down the steps, applying medicine to his bleeding head and putting him in a taxi. A short while later, the drunk man presses charges, claiming the Canadian beat him. Police slap the Canadian with a 300,000 won fine in a summary indictment. Refusing to go down quietly, however, our Canukistani hero contacts the Korea Legal Aid Corporation, lawyers up, and gets a formal trial. Of course, the testimonies of the teacher and the drunk man differ, but the medical evidence shows the man was not beaten. The teacher is found innocent, and the police appeal is dismissed.

Case #2: A Moroccan is charged with threatening a bar maid with a beer bottle and sexually assaulting her. The Moroccan admitted he had sex with her, but that she was a prostitute whom he slept with after arranging it with the bar owner. Based on DNA evidence and the victim’s testimony, police charged him with rape. The Moroccan contacted the Korea Legal Aid Corporation and lawyers up.

The lawyer notes that the victim had plenty of time to escape, but didn’t, and after the supposed rape, she spent a long while talking with the accused. The lawyer had the scene of the crime searched, and turned up evidence that the victim had lied about the nature of her place of work. Prosecutors, noting the defendant’s lack of remorse, ask for 10 years, but instead he is aquitted.

Case #3: Chinese students are accused of gathering together to harrass, intimidate and assault political opponents and police in… oh, sorry, they actually did that. My bad.

The Korea Legal Aid Corporation said on April 29 that it helped some 1,237 foreigners last year. Of those, 102 involved criminal proceedings. In 2006, the corporation helped only 607 foreigners.

Most of the foreigners who asked for help were getting shafted because they either didn’t know the law or because they were illegal aliens. Some 83.7% of the foreigners who asked for help had come because their employers had failed to pay them wages or severance pay.

A Korea Legal Aid Corporation official said that as more and more Koreans come to see foreigner crime as a social problem, anti-foreign bias, too, is on the rise. He said there are cases of foreigners being detained simply because they’re foreigners and foreigners being unfairly treated in criminal proceedings.

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When you take out your garbage, be sure to use the correct bag, lest something like this happen to you.

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OK, so you’re sitting in some bank in Namdaemun, a large bag of money with you.

Next to you sits a foreigner. He notes that you’ve dropped some money.

You go to pick it up, but while you’re distracted, the foreigner’s buddies comes and takes your bag of money. When you finally notice, it’s too late.

You are now out 60 million won and 10 million Japanese yen.

On a positive note, the bank camera gets it all on tape.

Judging from the planning involved, police think they’ve got a professional gang of pickpockets on their hands.

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Mongolians in search of the Korean Dream are learning Korean by the ger-load:

English may be the most popular foreign language in Korea, but in Mongolia more people take the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) than the TOEFL. The TOPIK is a Korean language proficiency test for non-Koreans, supervised by the Korea Institute of Curriculum & Evaluation and offered twice a year.

Last Sunday, 582 Mongolian students took the first TOPIK test of the year. Introduced in 1999, the test initially drew only about 200 students per year in Mongolia. But in 2005 that figure more than doubled to 487, then climbed to 584 in 2006 and 925 in 2007. Based on the number taking Sunday’s test, the total figure will likely exceed the 1,000 mark this year.

And in 2007, some 15,000 Mongolians took the Korean Language Proficiency Test, or KLPT, which is designed for people preparing to work in Korea. Mongolians currently outnumber USFK, with 33,000 Mongolians living in Korea. Korea is also Mongolians’ No. 1 destination for overseas study.

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Northport, NY, native Alia Sabur,19, will join the faculty of Konkuk University next month after she finishes a short-term stint teaching math and physics at Southern University in New Orleans.

At Konkuk University, Sabur said she will take part in classroom instruction, but will also focus on research into developing nanotubes for use as cellular probes that could help aid in cures for diseases.

Ms. Sabur started reading before most infants learn how to walk.

She started talking and reading when she was just 8 months old. She had elementary school finished at age 5.

She made the jump to college at age 10. And by age 14, Sabur was earning a bachelor’s of science degree in applied mathematics summa cum laude from Stony Brook University — the youngest female in U.S. history to do so.

Her education continued at Drexel University, where she earned an M.S. and a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering.

And she’s a black belt in taekwondo. Read more here.

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Like Brian — who has a full write-up/commentary on the Sexy Mong girls’ battle against evil blue-eyes and interracial relationships (or at least when they involve Korean women and foreign men) — I watched “Sexy Mong” last night. Or at least the end half of it.

But I missed “the scene.” Actually, I didn’t even know there was “a scene” until I read about it on Korea Beat via Brian’s blog this morning.

And now I’m completely despondent.

Well, I can always console myself knowing there are three more episodes to go, and there’s likely to be plenty more where that came from. I’d imagine some resourceful blogger at Naver.com will soon come up with the goods, too.

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In you haven’t read it yet, check out Korea Beat’s translation of a piece of brilliant undercover reporting by the Weekly Chosun on Itaewon’s foreigner-only bars.

(HT to GI Korea)

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I swear to God, you can’t make up stuff like this. It’s like living in an irony-free zone sometimes.

In the first episode of season 2 of CGV TV’s “Sexy Mong” series (think Korean adult comedy meets Charlie’s Angels), the Sexi Mong girls — including Djamilya and her continued oral fixation — head to that den of inequity known as Hongdae, where they witness foreign men and Korean women doing the “bubi bubi dance” and hear the tale of one women who’d recently fallen victim to the evil deeds of a foreign man.

Or, as the Segye Ilbo put it:

The first episode of “Sexy Mong Returns,” a four-part series to run every Wednesday and Thursday starting from April 23, is already drawing attention as its deals with an episode involving sexual assault by foreign English teachers, something that has been a social issue for some time.

Well, at least the chicks are fly…

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The government has released the details of its plan to hire gyopo students and students in Korea-related majors as English teachers for rural districts.

Under the program, called Teach and Learn in Korea (TaLK), led by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, the government plans to hire about 500 teachers among ethnic Koreans and students studying overseas. They can stay for six months or one year.

Applicants are required to complete two or more years of university education. Foreign students staying in Korea cannot apply for the program due to visa transfer issues, the ministry official said.

In addition applicants should hold citizenship or resident cards from the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand or Britain. The program, starting this July, will exclude South Africa, unlike general English-teaching visas.
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The participants will have round-trip airfare and allowances of about 1.5 million won ($ 1,500) per month as well as a monthly accommodation of 400,000 won.

After four to six weeks of orientation about Korea and basic teaching skills, they will teach after-school classes by forming one-to-one working partnerships with Korean university students. The ministry will select their Korean counterparts after completing applications from overseas.

Check out the TaLK website for more info.

It’s a shame rural districts are having such a tough time getting teachers. I really enjoyed my time in the countryside, and consider myself quite fortunate that my first three years in Korea were spent in a small rural town rather than Seoul. In fact, as much as I really like Seoul now, I wonder if I’d stayed in Korea as long as I have if my introduction to the country had been the big city.

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