The articles from events that come to mind were not specific on who the members of the good citizen group were, but I did’t get the impression that they were mostly university students — in these examples that come to mind.

I don’t remember the 1995 subway incident mob being mostly university students.

I can also remember a couple of cases involving taxi drivers and US soldiers where the mob came from regular people in the street, and I don’t believe either case was in a university entertainment area.

I can think of a shop lifting example in one of the shopping areas where the mob chased but did not catch the soldier who snatched some goods and ran.

And I can think of a bar district case, not in Itaewan I believe, where two soldiers running from the mob went into a bar and barracaded the door and refused to open it until the police came and backed the crowd up. And I didn’t get the impression this was a university student group or a university entertainment area.

Something else people need to realize is that majority of these soldiers are in the 18-20 years old range are still immature, first time away from home, and in America they couldn’t drink. Plus many of them come from disadvantage backgrounds (ie-the hood) and have joined the Army as a way out along with those who are just your average high school student who enlisted for college benefits. We don’t get Harvard grads to enlist in the army to become privates.

They come to Korea and go to the ville they are surrounded by women who are building up their egos even though they only want their money then they got all this alcohol offered to them even though they are underage all the clubs sell to them anyway. So you got these young immature people first time drinking, plus the juicy girl factor thrown in. Having been a veteran of more CPs than I can remember the majority of the fights are these younger soldiers who fight over drinky girls. One drinky girl dumps the soldier for another soldier because the other soldier is feeding her more money. The dumped soldier comes to the club drunk sees the girl with another soldier and a fight occurs. This is the reson USFK raised the drinking age to 21 to help reduce the number of drunk young soldiers in the ville and it has helped. The number of incidents is way down since they changed the drinking age. However, it is all soldier on soldier fighting not Korean on soldier fighting. I have spent three of my past five years in Korea and have done many CPs and read the blotter reports. Keep in mind this is for the 2ID area and I can count on one hand the number of soldiers fighting with Koreans. All involved alcohol but they did not turn out in mob mentality melees. There was a fight it got broke up. It didn’t turn into a xenophobic hate fest mob of “concerned citizens.” So why does the mob of “concerned citizens” only occur with militant university students? Maybe it is because they are out looking for trouble? I cannot recall an instance where a random mob of non-university students beat down soldiers. Maybe somebody out there can recall one but I can’t.

Now for ESL teachers or other non-military types you should be college educated to teach in a hagwon or whatever job you got, you have learned to handle your alcohol due to your age and college experience, plus you should of gotten all your hellraising days out of your system in college. So of course this group probably isn’t going to start as many fights compared to soldiers. I can conceed this fact. In the 2ID area you don’t see any expat types like you would in Itaewon and you wouldn’t want to come to clubs here anyway. They suck. I would hope however that you are more mature than the younger soldiers.

I’m not saying it isn’t true at all. Having been around US college town bars and Korean college bars, I did notice that young adult Americans tend to have fights inside and outside such clubs on a regular basis, but I don’t remember seeing any in Korea.

That doesn’t mean America is more violent, because I don’t remember seeing any middle aged women slapping each other and pulling hair in a super-walmart on a regular basis, but when I lived near an E-Mart, it seemed like it happened every weekend when I went to buy produce.

And of course street riots are a national pass time in South Korea.

I just reserve judgement when I read a comment like the one above — that a person has regularly seen GIs start the fights — that is quickly followed with “they must have done something to start them.”

A big part of the doubt comes from my own experience.

I worked with a Canadian teacher in his mid or early 50s who was a nice guy, but a product of the 60s.

A Korean female friend I had met in France had come to visit me in Wonju up from Masan. (I should mention the girl was just a friend and that she was absolutely beautiful — she was stared at constantly in France - and in Korea).

We were going site seeing, and while we stood at a bus stop in the city, a 20 something Korean male walked over to me with fists clenched and got right on top of me with his nose about an inch from my face and stood there glaring at me. He was not drunk. This was around 10 AM.

I was shocked and stood there like an idiot for what seemed like forever, before I gingerly disengaged myself (I could even just backup without effort since he was right on top of me), and I told my friend we should move to another bus stop.

Later that same day, virtually the same thing happened. This time the person didn’t stand so close, but another 20 something Korean, sober male squared off defiantly in front of me begging me to say something/anything.

This time my friend suggested we just go home, which we did, and for the next two days, she decided we’d only take taxis directly to places and not do much walking around, and she told me I needed to quit my job and move to a hakwon in Pusan where there were more foreigners.

I guess you can say there WAS a reason these guys wanted to pick a fight, but that isn’t how the comment I’m responding to put it.

My point in the story, however, was this. When I told the Candian teacher about it when school started back — he did all he could to dismiss it.

“You must have misunderstood.” I fought that line of argument for awhile, and I finally moved him off of it by suggesting he call my friend and asking if she had misunderstood what was going on in this encounter since she is Korean too.

“You must have done something” was the next argument, and I eventually got frustrated enough by it to close the topic altother.

For the rest of his year in Korea, from time to time when we were walking in the street, he might see a mixed couple, and he’d say, “See. Nobody’s trying to pick a fight with them.”

There is a strange phenomenon at work here, and I noticed it with more than just him. Some people go out of their way to keep the good feeling they want about Korea by dismissing the negatives…

Also, I could relate some of the other examples I had of being confronted in public by Korean males, and in absolutely none of them is there a clear action on my part that would suggest a “reason”/justification for the confrontation.

In fact, I’ll put up this example. I went to a small, traditional site in near Paju. This place was of interest to me in my research. It was advertised on the internet by Paju city. It was also in a couple of tourist book guides I’d bought. And it was in guide brochures Paju city puts out.

I went to it, and being small, I was the only tourist (Korean or non-Korean) there at the time. I started taking pictures of the outside of the compound and the tourist info sign boards (with the history of the place in Korean and English), when the caretaker (a Korean in his early 30s) came out, glared at me, then went inside. I came in through the gate, and I started taking pictures of the place and looking around, when the guy came back out and started screaming at me demanding to know why I was there and for me to tell my story (which is a rough translation of what he was saying in Korean). He really wasn’t asking these questions for any reason other than to have something to scream, because he figured I didn’t know enough Korean to understand him, but when I answered him in Korean that the tourist official at Paju city hall had told me this was a tourist attraction (which was the truth. The head of the office sat with me and one of his people and mapped out a course for me to follow to see the different historical buildings I wanted to see that day — which was much nicer than what I would have gotten in the US) — anyway, when I said this in broken Korean, the man stopped screaming and just glared at me, until his wife called to him from inside their building, and told him to shut and come inside.

Did I mention this was in 2002? Late fall. In Paju. The town near which the two middle school girls were crushed to death?

When I got back to university in the US, and I was telling a friend about this, a visiting prof on Korean studies (a white male) was listening, and then he proceeded along the same lines as the Canadian. I must have misunderstood.

How the fuck do you misunderstand someone ten yards from you screaming at you at the top of his lungs?

He went on to say I should have found the guy first, and asked permission to come to the site, because in Korean society — blah blah blah blah blah…..

First, I would have had to go into the site to locate the guy to begin with, unless he was suggesting I should have stood ‘a respectful distance away’ and shouted out in the politest level of Korean for permission to approach.

But, what I told this prof was that I didn’t think it normal even in Korea to have to apologize for visiting a tourist attraction open to the public and advertised on the internet and elsewhere.

His response, “Gosh, that’s an American way of thinking.”

I did well to keep from letting my temper go at this point. I didn’t really get mad at the guy at the Korean tourist site until later that night when I started thinking about it more. But I wanted to punch this professor in the face.

He isn’t alone, however. This is an odd phenomenon I’ve run across some among expats in Korea.

Perhaps it can be argued others and even I might tend to jump to the conclusion the Koreans are at fault when I hear of events like these we’ve been discussing, but I try to guard against it, and I try to find as much information as I can on individual instances before I solidify conclusions.

But, having been through confrontations that had nothing to do with bad acts of my own, I get a little touchy when I hear “they must have done something, or else it wouldn’t have happened.”

When will americans realize that korean and Kyopos fucking hate the USA. Even those fucking katusa hate the yankees.

Silly sally you are never going to get message to korean shit eaters like GI korea or Marmet hole. They are too busy kissing korean ass.