Korean Job Discussion Forums

[gotte00]

helping a drunk, unconscious man in the street near my house. Here's the story:

I was walking home on Saturday night, approximately at 1 am from Gangnam to Nonhyun-dong. On my way home I saw a man passed out in the street. He was surrounded by a few people that were trying to help. I walked to the local 7-11 to get him some water, we made calls to both the ambulance and police and neither did their job at all. The man apparently hit his head on a wall and the street and was unconcious. He finally awoke only to hit people and was ver disorientated. I told him in my very limited Korean to sit still the police and ambulance were on their way.

Once the police arrived, they started to interview those present, including myself. I told them he was unconcious and needed to go to the hospital for x-ray's, or at least check out before they sent him home. After telling them this, I was then told to quiet down and was pushed toward my home, twice. The police, as usual in this country, did absolutey nothing. Once the ambulance arrived, one police officer told them the drunk man didn't need any help and they should leave. One officer asked the man if he was ok, of course the man said yes, but he was passed out when the cops pulled up. The police officer that did this was a man who was 40 or 50 years old and didn't want to be told what to do. He's obviously not trained well, because is many countries such as America, Japan, England, etc. the police would not leave the scene without knowing the man was medically stable. There were others in the neighborhood trying to help the drunk, passed out man and the police office only said shikaro(shut up) and then walked to their car and left the scene. The man who hit his head was obviously not in good form and needed medical attention. He didn't know exactly where he was and was very aggresive with those trying to help him.

I'm terribly disappointed with the response and the training of your police officers and medical team that were on site. South Korea is now a world power and needs to act like one but they don't. the police have no power at all, no authority. They didn't know what to do, as the man was passed out, they kept him on his back, and anyone who knows if someone is passed out, they should be turned on their side so they don't choke on their vomit, if there is any. I don't feel safe in this in case of an emergency. The police do not do anything whatsoever except drive around with their friends in the car and tell people to move to the side of the street so theycan drive on by. I don't want to say what needs to happen as I'm just a foreigner, but I've been here long enough and realize that things need to change and they need to change now. The police need to step up and help those that need it. I've never been to a country where the police have such little authority, they don't scare me at all. I hope this email is read and passed on to the proper authorities because I'm highly disappointed in the response of the unconscious man.

Am I wrong in trying to help? I hope that if I was the one who was unconscious that the police would do more than threaten to arrest those trying to help. That maybe they would actually do their job and take care of those in need.

Sorry for the long rant.

[periwinkle]

I think it was kind of you to help. I can't figure out what the deal is with the police here, and I really wonder what they do all day.

[ttompatz]

[The Hierophant]

I have neither trust in, nor respect for, the police in South Korea. I don't even know why they exist here.

[uberscheisse]

i rarely see south korean cops standing up.

except for the little dudes who carry shields and wooden katana protecting yongsan garrison and cheonghwadae.

the rest might as well be sleeping.

[I-am-me]

I started a photo album with drunks I encounter sprawled out on the street. Just take a pic and move on! Let koreans be koreans.

[periwinkle]

[Sooke]

Back in the day, around WC'02, my wife was a translator for the police department in Jeonju. She was hired to help the police talk to any foreigners they might pick up during the World Cup. Anyway, around the same time a young Korean woman was murdered in England. Turned out she was murdered by another korean national who had set up a guest house in London or something. So the English sent some police over to investigate the murder-even though they had the murderer, they wanted to see if there was anymore to the story, etc. So they came to Jeonju to try and interview the murdered woman's family and friends, as well as the suspect's family and friends and so on.
Well, according to my wife, the Korean police acted like petulant 3 year olds-refusing to help the English police with their investigation and whining about the fact that foreigners were coming here to do their job. My wife was constantly apologizing for their behaviour to the English cops. However, she also said that she was surprised that the English police came here to follow up the investigation, because she knows that the Koreans wouldn't do the same. My wife quit the job as soon as the English left, partially because she felt ashamed of the Korean police, and partly because they were treating her like total crap because she was helping the English police (ie: doing her job.)
Korean cops suck. That's probably why there are no Korean police dramas, because all they would be doing is sitting in the police station or napping in their car with their cherries on.

[fandeath]

Hello gotte00,

I had the same experience with my girlfriend. She was drunk and fell down a flight of stairs and lay unconscious. I called the ambulance. When the ambulance came, she was already up. They asked her �Are you ok?�. She said �yes�, but she was still a little dazed� They did a quick check and then they were off. I was not satisfied with their quick check and wanted them to do more.

After this incident, I reflected a lot about the culture difference. I, like you, was frustrated at the lack of attention and care my girlfriend got. Of course, my comparison for what was standard care and attention came what a Canadian emergency worker would do.

I do not claim to have come to any absolute conclusions in my pondering, but I am not so quick to judge Koreans as be negligent in their duties.

I cannot speak for America, or other developed nations, so I will speak from a guy from Canada.
There are several reasons, in my view, why Canada is careful with possible injured people.

1) Healthcare � Going to the hospital for an unnecessary trip will not cost as much as it would in Korea.
2) Lawsuits � I think the main motivation for the extra care is fear of lawsuits, which is almost non-existent in Korea. Even if there were a successful here lawsuit, the payout would be smaller than in a developed country. I am sure that if lawsuits had less power then maybe medical care would suffer, too.
3) The Safety/Risk factor calculation is different. What does this mean? I just created this term, but if someone can explain it better, it would be appreciated. This means Koreans do not focus on safety as much as Canadians. Many Canadians come here and say �that�s dangerous� to so many things and situations in Korea. Although they are right that the activity or situation in Korea is dangerous, as Canadians we are taught/programmed to identify, avoid or prevent that situation more than Koreans are. A Korean will rely on the risk factor more. They will think in terms of odds of danger.

For example, you stated that there was a risk that the guy might choke on his vomit. I tried to do a google search to find out actually how many people die to choking on vomit. I only came across 1 statistic(I didn�t look beyond the first page, feel free to go search deeper)

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/2599

Odds of choking to death on your own vomit: 1 in 740,000 (NSC)

Now a developed nation would focus on the few who die. Because some of those few may be preventable. Plus, if it was proven that one of them could have been prevented then somebody is paying out a lot of money.

The Korean would focus on the odds. There is almost no way that guy is going to be close to choking on his vomit. And they are not willing to waste so many resources to prevent that one death.

There is definitely a culture difference regarding safety. Of course, I support the developed nation method of trying to prevent all injuries even if the odds are low that something would happen. But, we cannot be quick to push our cultural views on Korea. Even the Canadian system is not perfect. Some would say we are over-safe (my Konglish).

And the situation in your story is unclear. Was the guy visibley hurt? How did you assess his injury?
The fact is: He did not seem to want the medical attention. Of course, was he in a state to judge that for himself?
We must also consider that drunk people on the street, even sprawled out on the ground is a common occurrence here in Korea, and the police and ambulance may see these situations a dozen times a night.

As for the poilice�I often wonder what they do here, but again, they do not have to do what police do back in our home country. The law, tolerance of law-breakers and police duties are different.

I am not attacking your interpretation of the events. And of course, I agree with your main premise, but I do think there system is not as negligent as Westerners are quick to think.

Note: Sorry to all the PC people about using developed nations, Western nations and Canada, America, England. I kind of clumped them together as one thing. If you have a problem with that please send a PM to the user PcinKorea

Also, sorry for generalizing the Korean emergency care system.

[Milwaukiedave]

I've had a couple of experiences with the police here in Korea. And I'll recap those briefly because I don't want to sound like I'm hijacking the thread.

1) In Daegu, my neighbor had her stereo up loud when I got home late one evening and I knocked on her door. She didn't answer. A few minutes later she knocked on my door crying and ended up inviting herself in (yes that's what I said) and I ended up getting my landlord involved because she wouldn't leave. She was distraught for some reason. My landlord called the police and they took her away (and my guess fitted her for a straightjacket).

2) In Gangnam there were some noisy girls who hung out 24/7 stalking some pop stars living in a nearby building. I called and complained quite often. The police would try to chase them away and tell them to go home, but it never worked.

I probably would have helped the guy as well. Given the reaction you got, I wouldn't ever go out of my way to help someone especially if the police were involved. As a foreigner, you can be arrested anytime anywhere if they have a good enough reason. The lesson here is don't give them a reason.

[inkoreaforgood]

[gotte00]

Fandeath, in my opinion the man looked hurt, very groggy and couldn't stand up straight, confused looked on his face. Granted that could be due to the amount of alcohol he probably had in his system. I had asked others present if they saw what happened and they said the man fell backwards and hit his head on a brick wall and then again on the street. I was there for a good 5-10 minutes before he came to.

I probably should not have intervened and maybe the guy probably wouldn't have choked on his own vomit, but isn't it better to be safe than sorry. I also agree with you that we in Canada and America are probably too safe and may even overeact a bit, but I think there's a reason why. I'm not trying to push the western culture on anyone here. I think we have our flaws as well. But in terms of safety I believe that Koreans need to be educated in the world of safety. Korea is becoming a world power, they are definitely an ecnomic power and they have the resourses to educate their citizens about safety. For some reason they neglect to do so.

Safety is obviously not an issue here, if it were the government wouldn't have gone back on their law of requiring children under the age of 5 to be in car seats. I also don't see many people wearing seatbelts, especially children. Korea has the highest rate of fatalities for those under the age of 14 in OECD nations, accoding to nationmaster.com and UNICEF. To me, all this ties in together and yes there are cultural differense which I fully respect, but when it comes to safety I think we should all be on the same page.

I'll step off my soapbox now.

[kermo]

I had a reasonably good experience with the ambulance service a few months ago. I was waiting at a bus stop, and there was a man lying propped up by a post next to me. Suddenly, he rolled over, fell off the curb onto the street, banging his head sharply on the concrete.

I didn't want him to get run over, so I tried to roll him back up onto the pavement, and noticed he was bleeding from the back of his head. A university student and an older adjosshi noticed that the man needed help, told me they didn't think he was drunk, and agreed to call an ambulance. They took quite a long time to show up (at least 30 minutes) and the three of us waited.

When the ambulance arrived, they checked him over quite thoroughly, cleaned his wound, got his cell-phone and called his friends/family to arrange for them to pick him up. I thought they were a little rough while cleaning him up, but they knew their stuff-- they did a good job of waking him up enough to get a little information out of him.

All in all, I was happy to see people taking care of each other in the big city, and to have emergency services taking charge of the situation.

[manlyboy]

[Milwaukiedave]