Who's hurting who?

James Pearson

By James Pearson and Raphael Rashid

Despite its Christian roots, the Christian Broadcasting System (CBS) tends to have a more secular view of the news, and credit to it for doing so. But their latest onslaught against white people is confusing ― the noble virtues of “love thy neighbor” seem to have been forgotten in the pursuit of headlines.

CBS-run newspaper Nocut News published an article last week about a female student who found hidden-camera sex videos on a foreign teacher’s computer. Since the lady

Raphael Rashid

in question was not herself a “victim,” she was unable to report the incident. Instead, she leaked the information to Nocut News who promptly went on to “exclusively” reveal details of “Ms. B’s” shocking discovery, and her sense of betrayal from “Mr. A.”

However, rather than echo the demonization of the American culprit cited in the original story, top-rated comments were instead targeted at Korean women for being “crazy bi**hes who go nuts when there’s a b***ard Westerner and spread their legs for him.” Clearly unsatisfied with this sexist (and not racist) response, Nocut News turned it up a notch and decided to promptly publish a follow-up series of articles to expose “the truth and distorted values” about white foreigners in Korea.

The series, currently in its eighth part, has proven more popular and the Nocut News editors have exposed details on apparently promiscuous foreigners such as: “The Internet is full of books like ‘Making out with Korean girls for dummies,’” “Why do foreign elementary school teachers take drugs?” “‘Korean Girls are pretty, let’s have a drink together’: Itaewon’s night scene,” and “‘What's this got to do with criminal charges?’: So it’s OK because you’re white?”

The articles argued that white men in Korea “break away” from their prescribed lives and adopt the despicable habit of “eyeing up the bodies of dancing women whilst swigging on a few beers,” in clubs ― an arena the author argued that meant the extent of the Caucasian male’s Korean language ability is purely limited to “Korean girls are pretty,” “What’s your name?” and “Let’s have a drink.”

This time, netizens were more fired up. “I want to kill that kind of foreigner, swaggering around as if they own this country,” said one. “Korean ladies, this is an international embarrassment (...) I feel so ashamed of these girls. You ladies are getting what you deserve,” said another.

One of the articles, based on “field research” in the messy trenches of Itaewon, concluded “we have no intention of judging all expat men based on a single night’s experience (...) however, from what we saw, it is clear that foreign men, or ‘hunters’, seek nothing but Korean women.”

But, while it’s certainly true that this behavior exists in Korea, it happens everywhere else too. Shockingly, people keep having sex with each other! Silly promiscuous people. The constant obsession with sex between Koreans and non-Koreans is baffling. As the sharply-dressed Daniel Tudor put it, such rhetoric makes white men appear to possess “some kind of sexual juju that can be deployed to entice unsuspecting Korean girls into their bedrooms” (Times Forum June 8).

Every country has its “hunters” and Korean people like to “hunt” too. Let’s not forget about “booking clubs,” those fusion bar/nightclubs where girls go with the specific aim to be “hunted” at one of their expensive-to-book tables by local men who lure them into their “dens” with vast amounts of alcohol. Indeed, “hunting,” in this context, is a Konglish term, used to describe the Korean male pastime of looking out for a tasty girl ― if we told girls in U.K. pubs we were out “hunting,” they’d assume we were having a drink in between trying to kill and eat the pigeons of London (it’s hard to look sexy with a mouth full of feathers).

As the Nocut series slowly made waves among Koreans and “foreigners” alike, a debate ensued, both on Korean-language portals and on English-language blogs such as our own, koreaBANG. Many non-Koreans criticized Korea for being xenophobic, but perhaps a reality check is in order. Westerners can surely live with a stereotype that affords them more “juju” than they deserve. But what about their fellow “foreign” comrades? White people and Westerners are an insignificant minority compared to the Chinese, Joseonjok (Chinese of Korean descent), Thai, Cambodians and Vietnamese people who account for most of the foreign population in Korea.

Unlike us “white hunters,” they can’t earn 40,000 won an hour for teaching school children English, nor can they benefit from a generous U.S. Army pension. Among the Joseonjok, the majority are lonely, single men, unable to bring their families with them thanks to a stringent visa process, often enduring taxing manual labor for very little reward. Many young Southeast Asian women in search of a better future end up here, thousands of miles away from their families, living with an adopted family on their own. Despite these difficulties, media attention surrounding the Suwon murder incident has painted an inaccurate picture of Chinese-Koreans as bloodthirsty murderers. And, despite the breakthrough election of Jasmine Lee, the first non-ethnic Korean to earn a seat in the National Assembly, many were quick to demean her, labeling her a “beggar mail-order bride” when she won.

Western expats can deal with a reputation that boosts their sexual credentials and such a stereotype should be seen as nothing more than a rather ridiculous “first-world problem.” Perhaps some journalists and expats alike would be better off focusing their energies elsewhere and do more to care about the invisible majority of truly ostracized people that live amongst them.

James Pearson and Raphael Rashid are editors of koreaBANG (www.koreabang.com), a daily-updated blog that translates trending topics on the Korean internet into English. They can also be followed on twitter @koreaBANG or on facebook.com/koreaBANG.