Korean Job Discussion Forums

[dogbert]

[Pyongshin Sangja]

Well, actually I wasn't really the hero in this case. I've told this story here before, but since you asked...I tried to stop them, but another guy who was just standing outside his place having a smoke helped the three of them push me into the street and he tried to burn my face with his cigarette. I was illegal at the time, I would probably be more assertive now. I called the cops and they said, in English,

"How long have you been in the Korea?"

"Two years."

"Why don't you speak Korean?"

Click. They hung up on me.

I called back and spoke to every cop in the station, they told me that they would come when they had time. I highly doubt they came. I told my boss the next day, he laughed and told me it was probably a family thing and I should have stayed out of it. I felt dirty, I wanted to go home and take a million showers. It's been uphill since then.

I also saw a guy knock his girl out in a parking lot once, she went into convulsions on the ground. Once again, I was illegal at the time. I got a few young Korean guys, they gave her CPR, I told them to call the cops and they said, "She is sleeping because she is drunk, can we have your telephone number?" They let the jerk drive home drunk, put her in an ambulance, got my number and two days later Immigration was at my house.

In that same hood, I also listened to my upstairs neighbour kick the hell out of his wife for about two hours one night. All these things happened in my first year while I was illegal, I would probably do something different now. I hope. A good friend of mine also watched a guy kick the hell out of his girl on the street in front of a cop shop and a bunch of onlookers. Nobody did anything until the guy actually threw his girl through the front window of the police station.

What a country.

[dogbert]

Thanks...that's absolutely astounding.

[mithridates]

Yeah, that is. I never see stories like that. The worst I saw was a drunk guy in his 50s who was angry at the guy working at the front of the bar for some reason. The guy kept telling him to leave but he wouldn't, so he picked up the phone to call the cops and the drunk guy kept on grabbing the phone, not letting him use it. I stepped in there and got the drunk guy out the door but it was hardly anything big. I've never seen a guy hit a woman in Korea before, not yet that is.

[khyber]

[margaret]

I wonder if there is somthing subtle you could do in a situation like this. I mean, obviously you can't go around telling the Koreans what to do, and they probably wouldn't have understood you if you'd tried. But maybe you could have pretended to want to buy a dog from the guy or even bought one, or taken him out for a drink or something to get him away from the situation. I disagree with those who think it's none of your business. I think wherever we're in a situation where someone is treated cruelly, it behooves us to try to do something, even something stupid or wrong, if only to keep our self-respect. It's obviously haunting you that you didn't do something.
Margaret

[rapier]

[Pyongshin Sangja]

Then you may as well suck on that shotgun right now. You don't exist.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

The bullying that occurs within packs of 'friends' never ceases to amaze me. My worst class of middle school girls is led by a moronic bully and all the others pay deference to her and not me even though she treats them like shit. I take her marker pen away because she's writing on the walls and she tells the girl next to her to give her her's even though the other girl knows I'm going to take it away, too, after the bully starts writing on the wall again. In a Western country she'd either have no friends or get the shit beat out of her after bullying the wrong person, but here she's the big wanta who can rally the rest of the class into a state of open rebellion. In other classes where the class leader wants to learn he/she'll cuff kids on the back of the head when they're not paying attention. Kids will sometimes get into fights that leave both parties balling and then the next day they're best friends again. I've seen women who must have been around university age playfighting and wrestling with each other in a headlock. It's like as if this country understands nothing but physical force, and the biggest a-hole wins.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

[Barking Mad Lord Snapcase]

[TheUrbanMyth]

[TheUrbanMyth]

[rapier]

Its definitely worth it if its someone you know. That way, they or their friends will be able to help you out when it comes to defending and explaining your actions to the keystone cops. Otherwise...tread very cautiously.