Korean Job Discussion Forums

[RJjr]

As everyone is aware, I was assaulted yesterday by a Korean. Nothing had ever happened like this in my first eight months here. Since it took eight months to get suckerslapped, I would like to limit the poll to foreigners who have lived here at least eight months. I'm curious to find out how prevalent violence against foreigners is.

If you vote yes, if you have the time, please tell what happened and how the police handled it.

[trubadour]

i voted 'yes' even though it was my mate who, completely unprovoked, started it. It never went to the police or anything; it was settled according to the ancient and universal justice of broken bones.

[SuperHero]

10 years in country - no assault.

[Mashimaro]

Never really come close in the few years I've been here.

[Ya-ta Boy]

I've been here 11 years and a bit and have not had it happen to me or to anyone I've known. (The story posted last week was fiction concerning the fight, although the rest was true.)

[SeoulFinn]

I'm nearing my 3rd year in R.O.K. and never had any problems with the locals. Well, problems that became physical anyway. I've been shouted at almost spat at couple times, though.

Maybe these confrontations happen to a certain type of people(*), since I have not been jumped at even at home. For the record, I'm not _that_ big (6", 200 lbs.) that some guy didn't want to try to kick my white hiney.


SeoulFinn


(*) No offense to OP or other innocent people who got attacked.

[cubanlord]

[faster]

5 years, only close to a dustup on one occasion, and the dude was falling-down drunk, so the dustup was easily avoided by simply walking straight in the opposite direction.

[RACETRAITOR]

I was attacked by two Koreans once. We were all in a group in the park back before Hongdae was flooded with foreigners. It would've been a little over two years ago. I was sitting on the ground with my friend Megan visiting from China where she's an English teacher and Boram, one of the Korean skinheads. There were a ton of other Korean punks all around us. One of them, Minju, is one of the most left-wing punks in Korea (the first Korean punk vegan), and that night he had reached a very big agreement with Boram, being one of the most far-right-wing Korean punks. Everyone was in a good mood.

One of the other Koreans was being a knob, and jokingly insulting Canada for no reason. After a few minutes of this I was getting annoyed, so I grabbed his ankle and gave him a push. He's a huge guy so he hit the ground heavily. He got up and kicked me, and all the other Korean punks jumped in and dragged him away.

The guy I'd been talking to, Boram, said "Sorry" and then punched me twice in the face. I said "This is bullshart" and got up to leave. For the next couple minutes I hated all Koreans. Minju, who was impressed with all the progress he'd made that night between far-left and far-right, tried to stop me from leaving and spoiling it. I threw him to the ground and was about to hurt him badly, when one of the other Korean skinheads came over and did a better job of calming me down.

That incident ended my year-and-a-half-long honeymoon phase in Korea and still affects me in a lot of ways. I still talk a lot of carp about the GMC guys (who have become even more sociopathic since then) and I haven't spent more than a couple minutes studying Korean since. It wasn't a major fight or anything, but my trust in two people I used to take seriously was broken and I went from being a welcomed guest to a white guy among Koreans.

On the other hand, three years in the Korean punk scene and this is the closest I've been to a fight. These were people I knew, not random strangers in the street who jumped me for no reason. I've never had anything like that happen to me. I've probably seen less violence than every other skinhead in the world.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

Over two years and the closest I've ever come to something physical was with westerners in bars. I did have a racist ajosshi peasant get very angry - he looked violently so - because I was with a K-girl on a bus, but his ire was directed more at her than me.

[periwinkle]

I was assaulted by a schizophrenic whose family couldn't afford his hospital bills; took him out of the funny farm to babysit him; and he took off. He assaulted me in front of my company, and the guards did nothing until he began destroying company property (he broke the automatic gate to one of the parking lots). In fact, one of the guards laughed at my broken Korean. Fortunately, the VP (an American) in charge of corporate safety, security, and compliance found out what happened to me, and all the idjit guards on duty that day lost their jobs. BURN!!!!!!!!

I got 400,000 won in blood money. Family supossedly couldn't pay anymore. If anything like this happens to me again, I'm not negotiating with the family. They didn't give a crap that that guy hurt me, and didn't take any responsibility for their inability to care for him. I'm still bitter about the whole thing....

[Woland]

[Junior]

Its rare.

What did you do to earn this "sucker slap"???

[twg]

Five years and not even a dirty look.

But, I'm adorable, so no worries for me.

[Homer]

Nearly 11 years here and I have never been assaulted. I also have never seen Koreans assault a westerner. No one I know got assaulted by Koreans.

I used to know two guys in 1997-1998 who got into fights but they were near raging boozers....


The worst thing that happened to me was some ancient harabogi spitting on the ground as me and my wife walked by him a few years back....no big deal.

As for your question of how prevalent violence against foreigners is...it depends what you mena by foreigner: do you just mean foreign teachers.

Circumstances also play a huge part....I direct you to the two hard core boozers I mentionned above.