Korean Job Discussion Forums

[IncognitoHFX]

Last night I took my friends out to a palace in Seoul and then out for dinner. They've only been in Korea a month, are a married couple and having some difficulty adjusting to the big city and the culture.

Anyway, so after the palace I took them to a Pizza Hut. The Pizza Hut is across from a CGV and another cinema, and close to all of the important government offices in Seoul. While we we eating, I noticed there was a few homeless people outside our window on the pavement. I didn't think much of it, other then the fact that I've seen more homeless people back in Canada in one day than I've seen in my entire time here. I went back to eating my food for a little while, and then I noticed someone was coming to our table. I looked up and there was a guy, about 5'5" tall, off center in terms of balance, wearing dirty clothes and with soot all over his face and hands, heading straight towards our table.

He put his hands smack down in front of my friend's wife's food, spat on it, then grabbed her knife and started waving it around. The whole while he was yelling gibberish in Korean. Automatically I looked at the staff and they were just watching with no intention of helping, maybe because they were all small-ish girls who didn't want to challenge the homeless guy.

Now, I'm the kind of person who always tries to be a little sympathetic or at least understanding of these sorts of people. But I've never experienced one coming into a restaurant before and having his way with your food right in front of you. I was also trying to prevent my friends from having this kind of experience so early on into Korea life, even though it is an experience that I've never had either.

So I stood up and reached my hand across the table, pointing at firmly at him. I yelled: "NA GA YO!!! NA GA YO!!!" relatively loudly. He stared right at me, and I said it over and over again, making "shoo" gestures with my hands and walking slowly towards him like I was going to hit him. After all of that, he started saying something which sounded like: "oh, no you didn't you son of a bitch, you mother fucker..."

Well I guess what I did really set him off, so the waitresses finally took him outside and I didn't have to lay a finger on him. Afterwards I talked to a Korean about what happened and they explained to me that the way I handled wasn't the best way to handle the situation in Korean culture. My problem is I couldn't have ignored the guy!

What would you have done?

[Join Me]

Some guy is waving a knife at you and you give a hoot that a Korean said you didn't respect Korean culture. For the future, keep one thing in mind. Your survival trumps any cultural etiquette EVERY TIME. In Korea or anywhere else I think the best thing to do is try to remove yourself from the situation and let the locals resolve it. He already ruined your friend�s food so the damage is done. If you are pursued, you need to stand up for yourself and do exactly what you did to send a strong message to the other person. You were kind of in a corner if he was standing at the end of your booth and blocking your exit. In that was the case, I think you did what you needed to do.

Even though you thought the guy was crazy, you probably would have had some problems on your hands had you hit a Korean. That is just the way it works here so you are lucky you didn�t have to hit him.

[IncognitoHFX]

[Join Me]

[Benicio]

You did the right thing!

The person who said you were not respecting Korean culture is a complete idiot. Respecting elders is one thing- and Koreans are not the only people on the planet who do it-, but no way should you have let this guy just go on like that.
So many times I've seen people here abused or taken advantage of by drunk or crazy older people and the victims and bystanders do practically nothing to help themselves or others besides just trying to flee the scene.

This claim of respecting elders is B.S. It's about fear- they are too scared to do anything. That's why the staff didn't do anything to help you- because they were scared. Now, when you got up to get the guy out of there, they suddenly became afraid you were going to do something.
Talk about blaming the victim! That's another problem with Koreans when a foreigner stands up to a drunk/crazy jacka$$!
Utter ridiculousness to blame someone for standing up and protecting themselves.
Most people are sheep. Don't get pulled down by them.

PS- I hope you walked out without paying for the pizza!

[excitinghead]

I've heard similar "cultural" arguments from many Koreans before. Although it doesn't apply in this particular case, in my experience 9/10s of the time it's used to persuade us non-cultured Westerners into accepting something blatantly unfair, sexist, unreasonable, and against all common sense, simply because it's "Korean culture."

I'll never understand how ordinary Koreans can't see through an ideology originally invented by an older male that justifies older males pretty much doing anything they like, drunk or otherwise. It's what makes reforming the education system here so important, as so far it seems primarily used for teaching younger Koreans to accept the crap their "superiors" dish out as part of their culture.

My MA major was in East Asian Studies, and to be honest I like nothing better than arguing about aspects of Korean's supposedly unchanging, timeless, immutable culture with them. Most of the time, it turns out I know more about it than they do, and when they pull the "That's Korean Culture" line they're just parroting one-liners about Korean history and culture and so on that they learned in middle school. They're usually completely wrong too, as anyone who's ever bothered to read just one book about Korean history can figure out for themselves!

Your friend may be a nice person, but don't listen to a word of what he or she says about Korean culture!


An irreverent look at Korean social issues:
http://thegrandnarrative.wordpress.com

[SHANE02]

He spat on your food and you are supposed to not embarrass him because he's older and it's culturally wrong?

BS.

I would have clocked him.

[spliff]

Did you finish the pizza? I would have either made the homeless guy pay or got the restaurant to forget the bill. Then I would have wishing I was wearing some steel toed Army boots to stomp his use-less azz w/ upon exiting the restaurant.