This article pretty much says (with the exception of a little half-assed caveat at the end contradicting the rest of the article’s message) that the higher incidences of murder and rape in Yeongdeungpo and Guro can be explained, according to “experts,” by the increased presence of “foreigners” in those areas. Never mind: that these are relatively poorer areas. that poverty and lower education go hand in hand, and both go hand in hand with more violent crime. that these neighborhoods are (like most neighborhoods in Korea) saturated with places to get shitfaced drunk, in a cultural setting where getting drunk …
Tag: idiots
Happy Chuseok, or, “If I Were White, Would You Beat and Abuse Me?”
While the holiday still registers on my own radar as little more than some time off work, I know some people out there might excited about Chuseok tomorrow, and I hope people do enjoy it as much as possible. (Though in my experience, Chuseok is viewed with dread by women of all ages, and young men, as the time when family tortures one another; when women are stuck doing insanely intensive kitchen duty, and where young people are constantly grilled about when they will get plastic surgery, get more plastic surgery, finish school, get a job, get a better job, …
Land of the Evening Nutter
So the other night, at the Bupyeong Subway Station, Miss Jiwaku and I were waiting for a train when some weird guy stalked up and sat down beside us. He immediately stared at her, glancing at me for a moment and then staring at her wide-eyed. It was obvious he was not right in the head, and I figured I had two options: Ignore him and hope he’d act civilized. Ask him what he wanted. I was wrong, of course: there was a third option, which is to get up and move away from the obviously crazy person. The thing …
Two Three Annoying Things
The two girls who politely excused their way to the head of the line at the taxi stand tonight — past a bunch of us who were waiting, and assumed they were just walking through the stand but not going to catch a taxi someone else had waited for the right to take, when… yeah, they turned and slowly got into a cab. Everyone was staring, but nobody said a word till I shouted, “What? What the f*ck?” Then a few people mumbled and so on — about the crazy girls, not me. The second girl didn’t mind, as she …
“… For Your Nation…”
Okay, so, imagine you’re a trilingual Korean. When you’re interviewed by a certain nationalistic, ridiculous TV station — not that I’ll name it specifically, ahem — and they explain the ridiculously low pay they’re offering by explaining that you are, in being offered this job, given a chance to do work “for your nation,” which of the following do you do? (a) laugh in the their face (b) politely ask for more money knowing you won’t get it, and say, “Well, I can make more money teaching in a hakwon, so I think that would be wiser for me.” (c) …