Korean Job Discussion Forums

[squat toilet]

Jesus H. i'm spitting mad this morning. What the fek is up with stalkers in this country???

Just to provide you with a little history:



1. A Canadian friend of mine during my first year here

She dated a couple teachers, moved on to a G.I and then, with 4 months left in her contract started dating some Korean guy. They went out for a couple weeks and she decided to break-up with him. He started calling her at least 20 times per day. Then he started showing up drunk outside her window in the middle of the night yelling her name...After a few days of this she called me, I went over and threw his ass around the alley for a while until he got the point that he was no longer welcome in our neibourhood.

2. A Korean American friend of mine

She started dating some tae-kwon-do instructor in our neiborhood. Similar scenerio as the Canadian girl - dated for a while but then broke up with the guy for various reasons. He started stalking her - started showing up at her door in the middle of the night trying to kick the door in. One night she finally went out to talk to him and he beat the hell outta her. A week later she was on a flight back to the States after only being in Korea for 5 months...I still receive emails from her telling me that she still has nightmares about the guy (it was 3 years ago).

3. An ex-girlfriend

After dating for a month or so she told me that a guy from her company was stalking her. She slept over at my place soon thereafter. We were woken up at 3am by a phonecall from some drunken waste case. She screamed at him and told him for hundredth time not to call and hung up. 25 minutes later the phone rang again -- this time I answered. In no uncertain terms I told him what I would do to him if he ever bothered the girl again....he called again an hour later. The next day I went to work with the girl, found the guy, got in his face, scared the living shit out of him and then went to his boss and had a little pow-wow with him and told him what the guy likes to do in his spare time.

Because I got his company involved and completely embarrassed the guy, the phone calls stopped

4. Girls at my company

One girl at my company, whom I was aquantainces with but not too close to, told me one day about her ex-b/f stalking her. A week later she stopped coming into work. Someone told me a day later than she had been in a car accident and was in the hospital. I later found out from one of her friends that her ex finally tracked her down and did a serious number on her to the extent where she was hospitalized. It's been a month and she's still not back at work.

5. A good friend from my company

I've been noticing she's been looking really rundown and exhausted these days. I asked her about it a few days ago and she told me that an ex-b/f has been calling her drunk every night for the past 2 weeks.

Last night I got a phone call at midnight. It was her all frantic telling me that he'd called over 12 times. She asked if she could come over because she was scared (lives quite close to me). She wasn't at my apartment for 10 minutes when her phone rang. I answered it but didn't say anything. From the other end was this inhuman pained bellowing/sobbing voice telling the girl how much he loved her and how he can't live without her (in Korean obviously). I hung up. 5 minutes later the phone rang again and I told the girl to have the guy meet her somewhere...I'd be waiting in the wings ready to plant the guys head into the god damn pavement once he arrived. She told me that the guy is well versed in Korean law and is well aware that he can't be touched....Even if she were to go to the cops to tell them about the guy, they would laugh at her because stalking isn't seen as an issue here. The guy is still a student so going to his company isn't an option like it was with that other asshat.

I'm frothing mad this morning and utterly sick of this shit. Anyone who knows me, knows that i rarely complain about this country but this shit is too fucking much...

Oh and apologists please spare me the "but but but, i knew a guy that stalked my friend back home...its not just Korea." Yah, I knew a guy like that too and the the girls father and brothers tracked the guy down and made short work of him. He quickly got the point to stop being such a freak...

Here its like a god damn epidemic. This last guy even has his friends calling the girl when she blocked his number. I don't know ANY guy who would say to his delusional, stalker buddy "Oh, so you've been calling this girl 20 times a day and she won't talk to you and she even went so far as to block your number huh? Now you want me to start calling her and harrassing her for you? Sure man, no problem at all."

Seriously, WTF???

~Squat Toilet pounding his head into his desk~

[jinglejangle]

It's good that you are here to help these guys become enlightened though.
At least when the girls give you the chance.
Good luck with the current one.

[Freezer Burn]

[eamo]

You will see this kind of behaviour on the Korean soap opera's my girl watches every damn night.

Guy gets drunk and starts screaming her name outside her home. It's seen as passionate and romantic. He must really love her.

Even a bit of roughing by a Korean man can be forgiven if it's done when blinded by passion.

A full-scale beating would not be seen as romantic though!!!!

[mullethunter]

my story is a little different, but i'd still class it as stalking (though not at the level your friends have had to deal with, i agree wtf!?)

i lived in yeosu my first year, and yeosuites are quite inexperienced when it comes to seeing the odd waygookin around. anyway, i decided to head downtown one day to do some shopping. as i was waiting for the bus i saw a korean woman, maybe mid-30's, kinda checking me out, but not any more than everyone else in yeosu did. i noticed she looked normal, except her lipstick was smeared on like she'd put it on without a mirror. i didn't pay any more attention to her though. she got on the same bus as me, and when we got downtown, she got off at the stop. i didn't think anything was strange, because it was a major stop, and lots of people got off there. but... things started to get weird from that point. she was walking literally one step behind me, a little too close for comfort, but i ignored it. when i went into a store, she followed me around like a puppy, so i left. she followed me into another store. at this point i was getting pi@#$% and left the 2nd store to see if she was stalking me. she did of course, so i turned around and confronted her, and spoke to her (for the first time, as we had not exchanged words up to this point), asking her, "why are you following me? please stop following me." (politely). she looked embarassed and nodded and said sorry. i don't think she spoke much, if any, english.
so... i decided to head to another store, and look back, and she's following me again, this time at a little farther distance
i go into a 3rd store, and she's in there with me, so i leave right away. as i leave i turn around, and say to her, (loudly and angrily this time) "stop following me!" no reaction from her. i give up on the shopping and decide to catch a cab home. i walk to the taxi stand and jump in the backseat of a cab, but she jumps in the front seat of my cab
this is where i freak out! i start yelling at her to get out of the cab, and telling the driver, in my very limited korean, that i don't know this woman, and i want her out. the cabbie understands and yells at her to get out, after i just about leave the cab, but get back in when the woman gets out. but... as we're just starting to go, she opens the door again, this is when we're moving, the cabbie yells at her some more, and she finally gives up.
it left me soooo angry and quite shaken, especially as i'm a single WOMAN, so i asked the cabbie to take me to my local pc bang, to hide out, just in case she followed me, i did NOT want her to know where i lived.

what a freaK!

[the eye]

it goes the other way, too.

i asked a 20something woman for the time outside my local department store one afternoon as we sat next to each other on a bench. i pass by there almost every day at different times to catch a bus downtown.

the next day, i sat down near the same bench to wait for my bus and she appeared about 5 minutes later and sat beside me again. next day, same thing.

a couple days later, i stood a few meters down the road and once again she appeared within minutes.

considering that i waited here at different times each day, i thought this to be an odd coincidence.
so i decided to test it.
i went across the road to a MCD's for an ice cream, sat in the window, and watched as she soon crossed trhe road and paced back and forth outside the restaurant .

i finished my snack and went back to the bus stop on the other side of the street. she followed. when i got on the bus, i saw her walking away.

the following days, i waited for the bus at the next stop.

about a month later, i'm walking with my girlfriend, looking to have dinner downtown, when i spot the woman who was following me. i pointed her out, and told her the story. i'm not particularly attractive, so it was a hard story tell.

my story was interrupted by our arrival at the restaurant and sitting down.
as i was ending the story, the woman appeared again and basically walked in circles around the area where we sat. the restauraant had a main door and a side door, and the woman made a circle past our table, in one door and out the next a couple of times and then disappeared outside. we both watched to make sure she was gone for good.

when we finished dinner, we left the restaurant, still freaked out by this woman. a few meters down the street, i looked back, and there she was again.
i turned around and yelled "go! kah!!" and she stopped and looked at me with this suprised stare. then she turned around and i never saw her again.

i seem to attract wierdos wherever i go, but this one really freaked me out.

[neandergirl]

When I was working at a rinky-dink uni a Korean colleague asked how stalking was treated in 'the West'. I said I wasn't sure exactly what was done but that since there had been several high profile cases, the police were at least beginning to take it seriously. She then began asking about how to get a visa for her brother. It seems he'd dated a girl once or twice in his first year of university and she'd been stalking him ever since. She's apparently tracked him down every time he's moved (including moves to 2 different cities). She'd call and scream at him, threatening to kill him, his family, herself. She'd vandalized his car, his apartment and his parent's house. She'd been stalking him for over 7 years but most people apprently didn't think it was strange and so I was told, the cops wouldn't/couldn't intervene.
Eventually he did leave Korea.

[chiaa]

I was just talking about this with my mother and wife yesterday. There seems to be something in the Korean psyche that tells them if they are persistant they will get whatever they want.


1. Had a guy in my store that kept asking me if I would teach him English. As I refused, he came back right at me asking again and again. He finally gave up on me and asked me permission if he could ask one of the customers in the store if she would teach him English. The same type of exchange happened again and I kicked him out of the store (only the second person to be kicked out of my store). I actually had to move him like a herd of cattle to get him to leave. He looked in the front window for about ten minutes.

2. A customer wanted to return some books. As the site clearly states there is a 20% restocking fee. You have to realize that the Korean sites do not allow you return books at all unless it is a domestically printed book. She hounded my wife for at least twenty minutes on the phone about this. "But I am going to buy a lot of books" etc. Never heard that one before...

3. A Korean guy asked me at least a dozen times, each on a different visit if he could get a discount--because the books he likes are "thin"

I think you can also see this in the posts that most of us have read where university students beg for a better grade from their professor.

[PolyChronic Time Girl]

wow, you guys have cool stalker stories....I really don't have any like that. English stalkers I had plenty of when I first came, and that's my dang fault for giving them my number, thinking we'd be having a cup of coffee every now and then. Yeah, right. I met this middle-aged Korean gal at the gym. We talked and exchanged phone numbers. For one month, every day, she would sit in her car outside my apartment, call me at 7:00 am and say "come outside now...we're going hiking" I would say "but I'm sleeping right now." She would be very persistent and say "no, I drive long time...you come out now!" And then she'd have her six-year-old daughter with her, who I suspected was there to marvel and be taught by the white monkey teacher.
I've had other experiences with odd Koreans coming up to me and saying "let's be friends!" I now have to be kind of a beeeatch and lie out my teeth, telling them I'm way too busy to spend any time with them. If they see my handphone and ask for my number, I say "oh, no this isn't my handphone...."
I remember my husband and I were sitting in a bar. I was getting toasted and am always a happy drunk. This girl just sat at our table and wanted me to correct her English homework and I had no problem helping her because, well, I was drunk. But my husband got completely furious with her and told her in rude Korean to bugger off, calling her an English mooch/stalker. She still kept sitting there expecting me to correct her homework
Just one of those things I guess....never had any problems with dangerous stalkers or anything.

[Cedar]

I love Korea.

But I have been stalked here so severly, I will never stop freaking when I see a man even 500 meters away who walks a bit like him, or see a car that seems to much like his, or if I hear someone's cell ring with the special ring I set for him (so I could know to ignore the phone). The police couldn't do anything, really, and I had to move to China (secretly packing and then sending him an email from the airport implying I'd gone to America). The ghost of this experience will leave me jumpy for life.

Advice: in the early stages of any relationship, no matter how good it seems, with a Korean, do NOT
*give out your human phone number if you have a land line
* show them where you live (go to a freaking yogwan to get it on)
* REALLY don't show them where you work
* reveal your favorite places to hang out

I am not joking. This guy stalked me for nearly two years, and he knew EVERYPLACE I'd ever go by the time he got scary. I had NO PEACE unless I was out of the country.

An example: He'd call 75 times a day even if I hadn't answered once. So bad I couldn't even call out because there were nonstop calls coming in.
Another: He'd hang out in the stairwell of the building next door that had a window 10 ft from my kitchen/living room window. with the lights off in the stairs... waiting for me to get home... watching what i did...

[FUBAR]

Now, this might seem harsh, but.... I have some Korean friends who have told me that if I have any type of problems with Korean people to let them know and he will have some of his "friends" go solve the problem. If it were me and one of my female friends were being stalked, I would have no qualms getting this friend of mine to take care of the problem. Don't any of you have those types of friends who can help remove a persistant person like that from your life?

[canadian_in_korea]

I don't have any stalking stories of my own but I have a friend who experienced being stalked. My friend is from New Brunswick, Canada...now I don't know if most people in New Brunswick are fast drivers but let me tell you when I drive with her I half expect wings to appear.. That is where her story begins....well for her anyway. She was at home one day...there is a knock on her door so she opens to find a policeman standing there.....her first thought, 'oh no, they got me speeding, traced my plate number'.. So she kind of makes a joke about it....' I didn't do it, I swear'. I'm not exactly sure of the exact words that he told her but in a nut shell this is it. Earlier that day an off duty policeman with his wife happened to be in the same parking lot that she was in, where this off duty policeman observed a man who appeared to be watching her, as he approached the man's car he became aware that wasn't all he was doing...buddy was apparently whacking off. The cop keeps the guy there ....calls the police....and they arrest him. My friend is totally oblivious to any of this happening. When they talk to the guy the find out he knows where she works, where she lives...everything he's been watching her for months while she has no clue. Apparently she wasn't the only one he was watching there were more women, she had to go to court, but there wasn't much she could say...like she said the prosecutor wanted to know if she was afraid while this guy was following her, she didn't know she was being followed....she was afraid after the fact. Afterwards she started to think....what if that off duty cop hadn't have been there that day, how long would this guy have followed her..? Now she is super paranoid, she hates people looking at her, she took up shotokan karate. The guy didn't go to jail or anything...I guess because he didn't touch/hurt anyone physically....she knows name....the company he worked for at the time. He worked at a company that fixes stuff....appliances or something....so you can pretty much guess when something she has breaks she throws it and buys a new one. Anyway, her story is a little different...she didn' t know she was being stalked.....guess he was what you would call a silent stalker. I'm not even sure if being aware of your surroundings would have helped in her case. What I tell my daughter, the world is full of freaks, always be aware of what is going on around you and trust nobody.

[weatherman]

Your post made me remember this article:

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200504/28/200504282024212939900091009101.html

[Cedar]

FUBAR,

the problem is, that's illegal. and since this stalker had been involved with the mafia previously (look, I know, don't give me that crap, I had to be in cop stations with this guy as accuser (against mafia guys trying to pressure him back into the fold). He could stand up to an entire group of mafia guys and go his own way, he wasn't the type that scared, and hurting him... look the guy was psycho, he wouldn't have stopped unless he'd been in the hospital. And if he had been, he'd have been taking me or whoever to court. Do I want that? Do you think a foreigner would fare well in court saying "well, he was stalking me, so maybe i pointed him out to some tough guys... uh..."????

[Corporal]