Korean Job Discussion Forums

tanklor1 · Joined: 13 Jun 2006

Hmmmmm....so, I went to the globa; fair in Central Park over the weekend which was half-decent but one thing struck me, actually it stunned me for a moment and weighed on my mind for the rest of the day. They have a seperate entrance for foreigners. They have three entrances: one for groups, one for other people and one for foreigners.

Now, my intial reaction was "seriously, WTF?" but I started thinking about this and the whole idea had to been agreed on by commitee. Since it was agreed on it must mean that there is a good "logical" reseaon that I'm not seeing. So can someone enlighten me on this subject. Why is having a seperate entrance for foreigners only a good idea?

riverboy · Joined: 03 Jun 2003 Location: Incheon

That's strange. I wonder what they would do if I went with my Korean wife and helf bred kids?

Crockpot2001 · Joined: 01 Jul 2007

True story. A caucasian friend went with a group of his Chinese friends from HK. The fair herded him into the seperate line. He asked why. They replied that it was "VIP". How they determined that they could not answer. They then said it was due to the H1N1 scare from travelers. He showed his ARC that proves he lives only 1 km from the fair in Songdo. His HL friends then proudly said they were here from HK and had arrived just hours before. The HK folks were still allowed to use the normal entrance while my friends gave the staff a hearty "F.U." and went in with them.

I'll admit, I've not been to the fair but for the circus (AWESOME!) because I know I will get pissy pants at the HITE/CASS beer festival. I also have heard stories about the Jetson-ish tech area which actually is a step backward for Korea. Lastly, the sustainability claims are completely off target and misrepresented. Pretty much a *beep*-show to get the mayor of Incheon into a position to be president.

daniel-andersson · Joined: 13 Jul 2009 Location: Seoul (but from Sweden)

Hi, yea they measured the temperature of all the foreginers and the welcome ladies who knew some english were placed at foreginer entrance. I didnt care so much about it, Im happy that they havnt canceled it Smile

orosee · Joined: 07 Mar 2008 Location: Hannam-dong, Seoul

Upset enough to write on Dave's but not upset enough to go there and check? Rolling Eyes

The entrance probably offers one or more of the following: English speaking cashier, special foreigner discounts (such as at Lotte World), a speedier service (because less foreigners there than Koreans), special brochures in English, ...

Or, if it was just a doorway, perhaps they made it 5'' larger than the Korean gates?

Anyway I've seen those in masses at pretty much every airport in the World, so why bother getting upset?

orosee · Joined: 07 Mar 2008 Location: Hannam-dong, Seoul

skdragon · Joined: 28 Jan 2003

They want to count the number of each type of visitor.
When I went, I asked and they pointed out the guy who had the job of counting the foreigners (there was also another counting guy for each of the other lines).

mayorgc · Joined: 19 Oct 2008

Before this thread gets any larger, let's just keep in mind that Korean's aren't racist.

GoldMember · Joined: 24 Oct 2006

It's reasonable for them to do some market research and try to find out what percentage of patrons are local and what percentage are from overseas.
But this is how normal people do it! There is one entrance, some nice person asks some people at random to do a 30 second survey, and one of those questions is where the person has come from. Easy and no longer do you have to have the us and them entrance segmentation.
Interestingly I bought a book to learn how to speak Korean. There were 3 titles:
Korean for Japanese
Korean for Chinese, and
Korean for Foreigners

Is the categorization based on eye shape?