Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Keepongoing]

Have you experienced any real discrimination/prejudice in the Western countries where you lived? Do you think that Korean is a more prejudicial society?

What about hapas (half Korean and half another race}. Is there more prejudice here than in the West?

I know this is all subjective, but I have had students suggest that they or their friends have had bad experiences in the West concerning prejudicial atiitudes. It seems to me that it would be much worst in Korea?

I know some kyopo who speak no Korean and brave it to come here and they tell me how hard it is. One girl came back, after having been adopted by a Dutch family, to find her birth parents. She speaks no Korean, but I admire her determination.

[Passions]

I grew up in San Diego in a predominately white neighborhood.

During elementary and middle school, I was told daily:

Go back to China. (If I told them I was Korean, I'd only get blank stares.)
Ching chong wong.
Fu**ing chink.
Gook.

with various gestures of making slanted eyes.

But I must say that during High School, virtually all of the racial attacks stopped.

I think it really doesn't matter where you live, being different from the norm will give children enough reason to harass. I don't harbor any sort of resentment towards white people, I just attribute the bullying due to kids being kids.

[OCOKA Dude]

[doggyji]

I guess it depends on where you live. I personally didn't experience any blatant discrimination here in Ontario, Canada. This region's just so multi-ethnic. One racial slur thrown at me by a group-up man was the only unpleasant thing I can remember that obviously has something to do with my ethnicity. But some of those guys I know who came here when they were little had some tough school life. It seems usually it's the worst in junior high school. But well, they are immature kids anyway.

[Mr. Friday]

I'm a caucasian, but my high school (South Pasadena, CA) was about 50% Asian, give or take, with the bulk being Korean and Korean-Americans. So maybe that makes my school unusual. It was all pretty much a non-issue as far as we (my friends, mostly Korean, and I) saw it.

An educational/humbling anecdote: I was a bit of a geek/nerd, but by junior high I was becoming physically bigger than a lot of my class mates. So I had a few short fights/scuffles, where before I would have avoided taunters and confrontation. After I 'won' a couple, I must have been getting a little full of myself. I got in an argument with a Korean in my group of friends and I thought I was being imposing by standing tall (about a foot taller then him) and up close. Faster than I could even register his motion he landed a kick square in the middle of my throat! Later on I found out he was champion of whatever local Tae-Kwon-Do league he was in Korea before his parents moved to the U.S. IRCC, that was the last 'fight' of my school days.

p.s. He and I got along fine after that, of course. We both knew it was a stupid argument.

[Hosub]

New York City; yellow monkey, gook, chink. The sort of stuff that people of European descent don't often get. But I've developed thick skin over the years. Something that is commonplace in what I would suppose in any city with a substantial number of internationals.

[JZer]

1) How old were you when you met an Asian person for the first time in your home country?

I met a Korean when I was 6 years old.


2) At what age did you realize that there is a difference between Chinese, Japanese and Koreans?

maybe high school, don't really know
Never really saw non-Koreans until college. The only asian people in my school were Korean or Fillipino.

5) How many Korean American (or Canadian) non-female friends have you ever had in your life?

Some but it is also the Korean or Korean America guys who are less interested in talk to me than the girls. But I had Korean friends in the U.S. and Korea that are men. I play on a local baseball team.

[seoulunitarian]

[jajdude]

non-female seeks non-male for non-hating interactions

[MikeJ123]

I was traveling with my friends cross country and stopped by a diner for some dinner. when we told the waitress what we wanted to order they asked us to leave. since we felt the cold environment we left like hell.

[klipspringer5]

To preface this so you can peg me demographically, I'm male, blond/blue, 6', straight/bi/other, mid-20s from the US.

Anyway, I'm getting kind of fed up with all the stereotypes getting tossed around, so here's another mitigation attempt:

First point.
Kids learn how to hurt each other and then grow out of it, for the most part. Not true for everyone or everywhere, but unless they carry it with them, kids' racism can't be taken too seriously. It can be corrected, with patience, firmness, and kindness. I grew up in an almost entirely white, multi-ethnic (not an oxymoron) town in the US. There were (and remain) sizeable Portuguese, Italian (mostly Sicilian), and Irish communities, as well as kids from various other European ethnic groups. Once we hit middle school and kids started to realize that there were actual, exploitable differences you'd hear stuff like "f'in' guinea", "greasy Polack", "dumb portagee", whatever. Come last couple years of high school and everyone's figured out that it's not just offesive but hurtful and hateful, and the only people still doing it are those with serious issues. Funny thing was, it was the (very) few black kids who didn't get that much, because everyone knew if you said the "n"-word or otherwise attacked a black kid because of his skin color you'd be in deep, deep, uh, crud. I don't think we got a student of Asian (Korean, incidentally) descent until high school, and he was one of the "smart" kids, so he got exempted, for the most part.

The more obvious physiognomic differences may make life more difficult for Asian kids, and anyone else who's visibly different, blond jokes went around occasionally too. And being on the chubby side, as I was then, and having an unfortnate last name was plenty bad. I'm afraid I did the slanty-eyed thing once or twice myself, but they weren't any Asian kids in my elementary school and I was doing it for fun. Was it racist? In a way, and I guess our teachers, yard ladies, or whoever didn't tell us to stop...

Over the past 10 or so years the town has started to grow a Brazilian community, and I'm sure, as the newcomers, they're getting the worst of it now, especially in the schools. Give it a generation or two and it won't be that big a deal. There'll probably be someone else. Out of curiosity, does anyone have any idea how foreign kids are treated in Korean schools? Do any foreign kids go to Korean schools?

Second point.
People have very different life experiences, not all of which make them a better person.

[Return Jones]

I hate to hear about Asians being singled out in North America, but I'm glad to see those that posted are not bitter and don't carry unreasonable resentment. Kids will be kids. Sometimes it's a shame.

Racism has existed, and will exist, in every country, culture, and society. Sucks, but it's true. It even exists in Korea amongst Koreans themselves. There still remains a notion that light skin is preferred over darker skin. The word is escaping me now, but there is a term in Korean for lighter-skinned people which equates to "normal skin tone." I believe only recently that this term was designated as unacceptable for use in official government documentation.

Best thing all of us can do is not to participate.

[Cedar]

[Son Deureo!]

[quote="OCOKA Dude"]

[Kimchi Cha Cha]

1) I first remember meeting and spending time with an Asian person in kindergarten when there was a Japanese boy called Kenji in my class. He left back for Japan the next year, though I was friends with a Chinese-Australian boy a year younger than me due to his sister being friends with my sister (he was/is Chinese in ethnicity but culturally he was Australian) .

2) Gradually over the course of primary (elementary) school as more kids from Asia arrived I began to realise how not every East Asian person was Chinese.

3) In Year 8, a Korean guy arrived and hung out with my group of friends. He was the first Korean person in my year but the time I graduated 4 years later (we generally only have elementary and high school in Australia), there would have been around 10 Koreans in my year. Probably 15-20% of my grade was Asian or Asian-Australian, mainly from Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines or India.

4) In kindergarten, though my friend I was talking about earlier, the Chinese-Australian guy, my friends and I never thought of him as Asian as he was born and grow up in Australia, spoke with an Aussie accent, loved his footy and cricket just live other dinky-di Aussies. I tend to think that whilst many Australians can be xenophobic, they are more culturalist than racist. Australians tend to accept people who like or grow to like the same things they do no matter their background; whereas are somewhat less accommodating to people who don't culturally assimilate as much. That said, they still are an awful lot of rednecks in Australia who are racist but I'd like to think they are minority.

5) I made a few Korean-American and Korean-Canadians friends through work and living here, though made a few Korean-Australian friends back home. All my Korean-Australian friends were guys in my year at high school. Though, I lost contact with them after high school. They were good guys though Korean guys had a reputation not to be messed with in high school after a couple of incidents where the Korean guy beat up someone talking smack to them. Based on my high school experiences, I learned that it's best not to mess with Koreans though I was somewhat surprised when I arrived here and it wasn't violent in any way at all. I presumed it would be after seeing some of those fights in high school.

6) Based on my experiences in high school, I thought that the Korean people I met were all decent, good guys. So, when I learnt that you could actually teach English overseas and support yourself financially whilst doing so, I decided upon Korea after looking into other locations in Asia.