By Asian Correspondent has a translation of an SBS news segment that makes wild claims about out of control GI’s in Itaewon. You can read the entire translation at the link, but considering the number of times I have been to Itaewon, yes Soldiers can sometimes act like idiots, but there is a whole lot more than Soldiers causing trouble in Itaewon. I have seen plenty of other foreigners and Koreans cause problems in Itaewon as well.
Also SBS did get some basic facts wrong which is nothing new in the Korean media. They mention that crimes by American Soldiers increased by 15%, but don’t tell you what the increase in crime was from. Was it from traffic related incidents which has been the biggest increase in USFK crime in recent years after the driving ban was lifted? SBS than makes the claim that assault, rape, and theft are up which is partially incorrect. In 2010, assault and theft were up in Korea overall, but not the more serious crime of rape. There was in fact no rape convictions in 2010. If a reporter is going to make such claims than statistics with a source should be given so it can be verified. I had to really laugh at the claim that GI’s lay down where ever they want. Does this SBS reporter ever ride the subway? I have seen drunk Koreans completely passed out taking up whole seats or lying on the ground on the subway or in the subway stations. This is not something representative of Koreans in general just a few drunken idiots, just like a GI laying down in Itaewon is not representative of all USFK servicemembers.
Must be a Korean Presidential election coming up. I wonder when the next Dokdo flare up will happen?
You can read more about this topic over at the Marmot’s Hole.
5:56 pm on July 13th, 2011 1
Itaewon was fun in the ’90s but there are far too many angry OTMs (other than meegooks)wandering around these days… (Probably not Canadians, either.)
Songtan still has a little of the old mood…
6:05 pm on July 13th, 2011 2
You’re right, the 90′s were good but now Itaewon is the suck.
6:58 pm on July 13th, 2011 3
The same station have recently ran shows about “Ugly Koreans” in the Philippines and Mongolia. If those stories were ever put up here, everyone will be saying how Koreans are acting ugly, no questions asked.
Now that it’s the turn of the GI’s to take the heat, we all act so victimized. It’s all “sensationalized”, “wild claims”, or the statistics are wrong and misrepresented.
In other words, Americans can do no wrong.
Love the double standards of the white guy’s community.
8:13 pm on July 13th, 2011 4
Link Tom? “Now that it’s the GI’s turn”???? There was a time when it wasn’t? As a GI in the late 80′s, early and mid 90′s and 2002 and 2003, it was always the GI’s fault. I just understood that was the way it was.
( I did kinda smile when the English Teachers started getting some of “The Treatment”. )
8:22 pm on July 13th, 2011 5
Tom wrote:
Tom makes a valid point about something that’s wrong with the anglophone K-blogosphere in general: Negative stories about native English teachers, USFK personnel, etc., are highlighted in the K-blogs, but copious negative stories about Korean teachers, ugly Koreans abroad, corrupt or ill-behaving Koreans at home, etc., are rarely highlighted. This creates a cognitive distortion about how much the Korean media covers the stories relative to each other, giving many the inaccurate impression that the Korean media focuses heavily on negative stories regarding foreign English teachers and soldiers while wholesale ignoring similar problems among the Korean populace.
That said, nothing excuses drive-by yellow journalism hack jobs, whether their targets be English teachers, Korean teachers, USFK personnel, 3-D workers, etc. Saying “it’s your turn now” ignores the glaring problem of sensationalist media.
8:26 pm on July 13th, 2011 6
hack jobs –> hatchet jobs.
And among the various targets from overseas, the USFK community is always at least on the back burner, recently supplanted from the top spot by English teachers, but a lot of people forget the anti-kyopo backlash from the 1990s. It’s surprising, really, that third-world manual laborers (so-called 3-D workers) have received so little heat when their counterparts in Japan and the United States get so much negative attention.
9:01 pm on July 13th, 2011 7
Kushibo,
It is my impression that 3D workers are so overworked and controlled that they have little time or opportunity for engaging in much irritating behavior…
…as well as a sense of gratefulness to make double what they could make Back Home… instead of a sense of entitlement.
The next big thing is when the children of half-poor farmers/half-uneducated foreign peasant start resorting to crime. They are racist/nationalist/culturalist targets waiting to happen. English teachers and GIs will be forgotten in 20 years.
As for Ugly Koreans vs. Ugly Americans, the best way to determine who is worse is to put it to a vote in a neutral place with a clear voting record.
Let’s count who irritated Filipinos voted for the most with their trigger fingers…
…although we might have to cast out the votes where greedy Korean children had their rich parents shot and angry American husbands had their wives killed.
9:11 pm on July 13th, 2011 8
ChickenHead wrote:
I don’t think that’s what’s at work here. There are tensions and problems, including that some half of all drug arrests are of Thais (see Marmot’s hole for a recent post of that) without getting as a proportionate amount of play in the press vis-à-vis English teacher arrests, while the Filipino market tensions and things like that occur, but they don’t get much negative play in the press, not like, say, in Hong Kong where that was a regular issue.
No, I don’t think it’s a lack of stories on 3D workers, but a choice by the press, so far, to focus a bit more on the privileged visitors who (are perceived to) misbehave.
I’m not so sure.
For starters, the Korean is downright effusive about how such these immigrants are demographic saviors. Yes, “saviors.” At the same time, I think their offspring will simply be too busy on the farm to cause much in the way of a crime wave.
9:16 pm on July 13th, 2011 9
Maybe some of us have worked with or taught or otherwise talked to a fair amount of Koreans and heard them bring up all these stereotypical items about US soldiers (and now ESLers) and USFK and so on, you think?
Maybe some of us have seen how the media coverage like this plays out among average Koreans over time?
Do these common ideas (like that GIs are “never” held accountable for their crimes in Korea) stem solely from an over-abundance of news coverage?
And Tom’s point is shallow as usual: Korean media runs a story about Koreans in the Philippines causing trouble and it isn’t a sign of rabid prejudice against Koreans. No duh.
However, let’s see Tom’s reaction if the Filipino media starts running stories year-to-year about Koreans in the Philippines that have as much distortion as the Korean media’s coverage has had long term concerning GI crimes and Tom gets to hear Filipino after Filipina tell him how Koreans run wild in their country and there is nothing their country can do about it and other choice tid bits of lies that average Korean adults believe as fact…
9:17 pm on July 13th, 2011 10
Do these common ideas (like that GIs are “never” held accountable for their crimes in Korea) stem solely from an over-abundance of news coverage?
– I meant to add “No.”
9:34 pm on July 13th, 2011 11
usinkorea, during the 2008 presidential campaign, did any Koreans ask you what you thought of Obama or who you were going to vote for?
During the 2004 campaign, I was with my parents in Italy and we got an earful from quite a few of the Italians and Britons we encountered in English. This was a function of little other than Bush, the Iraq War, and the election being a top story in the news (with or without distortions) and us saying we were from the United States.
If there were other things on Italian news — and I’m pretty sure there were — they didn’t talk with us about them because, well, they wouldn’t have seemed relevant to us.
In the 1990s, on my first trip to Italy, people asked us why the Americans were so obsessed about the OJ Simpson trial.
You’re an American, usinkorea, and the stuff is in the news. If the US or USFK is in the news, they are going to give you an earful or ask annoying questions. That doesn’t necessarily indicate media distortion.
9:41 pm on July 13th, 2011 12
(The point of the above is that the amount that students of English may wish to talk about US- or USFK-related stories is not necessarily an indication of disproportionate coverage in the Korean media. Similarly, I would also be loath to accept a Korean-to-English translation in a classroom as an accurate indicator* of what the Korean media is talking about; not only does that insert a lost-in-translation element, but it also makes it hard to separate the chinboista propaganda from what the media actually says.)
* Back in the 1990s, looking back over coverage of Tiananmen Square demonstrators, the highly complex wants of the student protesters — that the nascent economic reforms that had yet to permanently take hold be allowed to continue and flourish even in the face of a change of political leadership — were being described as “We wanting… democracy!” when a microphone was shoved in their faces.
That led to a complete disconnect between what the West thought the Chinese students were protesting about and what they actually were fighting for.
10:52 pm on July 13th, 2011 13
So, the giant statue of liberty was really a statue of economic reforms, and the dude stading in front of the tank… whoa… mind shift!
10:55 pm on July 13th, 2011 14
The starting point is not the media coverage – the starting point is the recognizable foundation of prejudice as evidenced by recurrent wide-spread willful ignorance on a topic tied to anger and indignation (inotherwords, clear racial/national/ethnic prejudice) among the masses – With evidence of the same prejudice in the media being a sign of how such prejudice is fueled.
10:56 pm on July 13th, 2011 15
The question is, so what are you gonna do about it? Bitching about it here isn’t gonna change a thing.
10:57 pm on July 13th, 2011 16
So, those students were really simply willing to take a bullet for economic reform – not so much for democratic political ones…..
11:01 pm on July 13th, 2011 17
15 Believe it or not, sites like this have some impact at least on the media coverage, I believe.
The Korean press and government and people really, really hate it when they feel Korea is being made to look bad in the global theatre.
And the media outlets and other elements of the society do check out the more trafficed K-blogs.
I’m not saying the impact is major. I do say it is significant. I do think it has played some useful part in why the media we’ve seen the last few years is different from what it was in the late 1990s and through 2002.
11:21 pm on July 13th, 2011 18
14 An example: A Korean guy I knew used to rant how racist Hollywood was – something we could have found common ground on — but the example he kept repeating was a Demme Moore movie that had one scene in a classroom where a fat Asian girl was standing up introducing herself and said she was Korean…
To this guy, that was a perfect example of how racist Hollywood and America was toward Koreans.
Now, if I had met a fair number of Americans who talked about how fat Koreans are, and if I had watched more Korean movies and TV and other cultural products and witnessed them portraying Koreans as fatsos — and because I have lived in Korea and know they are markedly less obsese than fatso American society —– I would have concluded like him that the Moore scene was an example of prejudice against Koreans that permeated American society…
11:35 pm on July 13th, 2011 19
Kangaji, the statue was not made for the demonstrations. It had been made for some other project at a university, and they decided to move it there and embellish it to make it some sort of a symbol of the protests.
“Freedom” was part of the slew of things they were protesting for, as that went directly to the Hu Yaobang reforms they were trying to preserve or promote (it was Hu Yaobang’s funeral that prompted the weeks-long protest in the first place).
usinkorea, I don’t think the students were ever planning to take a bullet at all, not most anyway. In fact, by June 4, most of the students had left and other than the hardline students, the ones that were left were trying to get train tickets home. When the tanks came, according to the Hong Kong reporter who was the sole “Western” reporter there at the time, the students packed up and left at gunpoint.
Reportedly, then, it was in the confusion and melee afterward, when the tanks rolled down the streets and toward the universities (iirc) in the midst of a government-imposed media blackout, that they were getting faxes of highly speculative numbers of deaths (I think the OC Register said there may be up to 10,000 deaths). It was then that they thought it was do-or-die time. That is when they took to the streets and that is likely when most of the bloodshed came.
It was a mess. Culpability lies with the government for demonizing urban students among the rural military units brought in to restore order, even if Western media missteps of reporting speculation as fact exacerbated what had happened.
11:38 pm on July 13th, 2011 20
One big caveat of treating a ranting student as a representative student is that the ranting student tends to silence dissenters. It’s true not just when it comes to talking about US-related stuff, but just about anything. The first to speak or the loudest to speak gains a great deal of power, and the reserved majority that generally don’t grab that opportunity lose out. A similar thing among Japanese, methinks.
2:09 am on July 14th, 2011 21
This is all about next year’s Korean presidential elections.
2:13 am on July 14th, 2011 22
Besides, if anyone is causing trouble in Itaewon it’s all of those Nigerians that Korea allows into the country with no jobs or sources of income. Come and stay as long as you like, Nigerians, and there will be no accountability fopr what you are actually doing in Korea. Korean Immigration will let you have a free pass.
4:44 am on July 14th, 2011 23
“However, let’s see Tom’s reaction if the Filipino media starts running stories year-to-year about Koreans in the Philippines”
I got news for you, they already do. Except you never hear about it because Koreans don’t complain incessantly about the Philippine media, and instead agree with them – as you expats do too. Koreans are always told by the Korean media, how Koreans are being “ugly” in other countries. Koreans are a group oriented society. One rotten apple can represent the entire barrel, and it can spoil the image of the entire group. Blame it on your troublemakers for making you all look like an a$$. I have been in Itaewon, and you can’t deny GI’s are much more violent when they get into confrontations. Koreans have an unwritten rule when they get into fights, the GI’s and White/Black guys in general, do not follow the Korean’s unwritten rule of guidelines – it’s no holds bar for them. Some of the violence is so vile, it just make Koreans astonished and shocked.
Again, instead of blaming this on the people who are giving you a bad name, you choose to focus on the excuses, denials, and the press. But the video pictures don’t lie.
6:21 am on July 14th, 2011 24
If they wanted to keep the USFK crime rate down in Itaewon, maybe the bar owners should be forced to start carding anyone with a buzz cut who looks no more than a day under 40. Am I wrong to think that some of the trouble makers are under-aged kids who drink way too much off base?
8:24 am on July 14th, 2011 25
I watched two younger Korean women take down another older Korean woman. By the time i got there to pull them off of her, they had already kicked her in the head/face, back and gut a few times.
I watched a Korean guy slap his girl-friend repeatedly about the face and head, in the street in daylight. Koreans all around. Not one of them helped, even after the guy left her beaten in the street. I helped her up and out of the street.
Not to mention the fights i have seen in Itaewon with drunk Koreans.
Or the korean guys that see you with one of their women and walk by with their “comments”, thinking the American doesn’t understand spoken korean.
You’re correct Tom. Some of the violence is so vile from Koreans. It just shocked me to see what koreans will do to other Koreans.
10:19 am on July 14th, 2011 26
“I have been in Itaewon, and you can’t deny GI’s are much more violent when they get into confrontations.”
Piss off. One of my in-laws was murdered by a couple of local thugs.
3:19 pm on July 14th, 2011 27
#23
“Koreans have an unwritten rule when they get into fights”
I think part of that came from Korea’s hierarchic social group order.
We usually hear about Fight or Flight instinctive response to a perceived threat or attack. But there is another option to just submit. You even see the latter with social animals like wolves when the attacker is a member of the group.
So here is the rule you should be aware of. When faced with an external threat or attack (from outside your group) you are more likely to consider it life or death and you go with the instinctive fight or flight. If you have military training and are taught how to be the predator you may more likely fight. But when the threats and attacks come from within your social group through constant physical abuse and bullying you become accustomed to submitting.
When I first came to Korea, I was surprised to see grown men being slapped around and taking beatings from physical piss-ants just because the piss-ant was supposed to be from some higher social status. What you call “unwritten rule when they get into fights,” I saw as people allowing themselves to take a beating. I don’t see that as often I as I used to these days.
One of the recurring stories in the Korean media right now is regarding abuses and suicides in the ROK marines. Since the shooting spree last month a 19 year hanged himself last week. There were indications of long term beatings on his body. A 48 year old Sgt. Major was found hanged yesterday but I doubt that was because he was tired of being a victim of abuse. I heard a TBS eFM commentor say something about 65 suicides last year and 82 this year. Those number sound extremely high for such a relatively smaller force and I haven’t found them reported anywhere. The commandant of the marines just offered to resign.
Sure, there is physical abuse and suicide in the U.S. military too, but I don’t think they are as cause and effect related as they are here.
4:09 pm on July 14th, 2011 28
#27 “but when the threats and attacks come from within your social group through constant physical abuse” da da da da That just BS Joec.
The first time it happened would be the last time it happened if they knew it was coming back at them.
The only individuals that get constant physical abuse are those that ALLOW IT to repeat a second and a third and a fourth and so on.
Those that SUBMIT I don’t understand. With the exception of POW’s and they have often found ways to resist.
4:44 pm on July 14th, 2011 29
#28
Hmmmm … Does everything need to be explained in the simplest terms for you? Do you understand tautological rhetoric?
If I say something is constantly occurring I am explicitly excluding things that are only allowed to happen once. I am explicitly referring to things that are allowed to occur multiple times.
Does that help?
9:05 pm on July 14th, 2011 30
The problem is that the people who are doling out the abuse are can get away with it because they control the strings and the gates to positions of higher pay, better work conditions, and/or more power. People submit because the opportunity cost of doing otherwise is simply too high.
As Korea has become more democratic, society as a whole has sought to rectify this — in those cases where people have actually tried to solve the problem — by reducing the amount of power sŏnbae have over their hubae, at work, in school, in the military, but often with limited success.
6:41 pm on July 15th, 2011 31
#29 It helped me to understand that you have no idea what I said.
Stated simply (for the guy that likes to use unnecessarily large wording) “fight back the first time and they will think twice before trying it again.”
I don’t know how to make it any simpler for you JoeC. Must be a really foreign concept.
7:00 pm on July 15th, 2011 32
I gave a fast look over the asia correspondent of Mr. Natan and I could not find anything good about korea, just the same boring negative news about korea. It is obvious that this “professional correspondent” has an agenda and I have serious suspicious about his real capacity to receive such title.
7:38 pm on July 15th, 2011 33
A GI sexually harassing an underaged Korean teen school girl in a subway train.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNMk9qj2Vao&feature=player_embedded
Technically it’s not a crime, but it’s this kind of behavior that gives GI’s the bad reputation. This type of “I own this country so I can do and say anything I want” is the real reason why Koreans who watch this stuff all the time, get irate.
7:40 pm on July 15th, 2011 34
^ a behavior that don’t show up in any stats anywhere.
7:45 pm on July 15th, 2011 35
Tom (#33), what makes you think that man is a GI? I’d bet dollars to donuts he is not. Obviously you haven’t been to Korea besides your occasional stopover at IIA, so you’re not familiar with the large number of Nigerians in Seoul.
7:54 pm on July 15th, 2011 36
He speaks perfect American English, as you can see from this scene.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TGGPtfZlZU&feature=related
Nigerian, my a$$.
Like I said, this type of stuff happens all the time in Itaewon, and is not extraordinary. Americans acting like conquerors instead of guards of liberty. Just because Americans demand Koreans to be grateful toward Americans, it doesn’t mean we have to put up with this shit all the time.
8:03 pm on July 15th, 2011 37
Well, his buddy speaks native English. The guy in the video doesn’t talk at all.
Yeah, after the second video, I think it’s more likely that he could be a GI, though it’s no slam dunk. They could be visitors to Seoul, the English-speaking cameraman could be a buddy of the very dark-skinned Black guy (who is considerably darker than a typical American Black, though there are a few African-Americans that dark). This is not so far-fetched, as a lot of Nigerian businessmen and students hang in Seoul do try to integrate with other members of the foreigner population. One Caucasian woman from Oregon I knew, along with her friend, counted Nigerian guys as about half of the men they knew in Seoul.
Still, whether or not they were GIs or Nigerians or whatever, I’m not so sure this would be harassment. Borderline, I guess, but certainly not a crime and perhaps more amusing than bad rep-generating.
8:43 pm on July 15th, 2011 38
Kushibo,
The guy’s mannerisms are American gangsta poser… not Nigerian. His buddy speaks American English.
Lex parsimoniae doesn’t support your grasping rationalizations.
Sometimes Tom is right… or at least on the right track.
For a number of reasons, this should be recognized when it happens. And reasonable-but-incorrect statements should be attacked.
Tom,
While irritating, it doesn’t say anything about America’s attitude toward Korea.
It’s simply a wannabe thug hoping to get some action while showing off the elegant hand movements of ghetto genteel to his friend’s video recorder.
It is really just a clash of cultures. What works with the fine ladies of Compton’s public transportation doesn’t go over so well in Seoul.
The only real result is thet Koreans find their stereotype of creepy black people to be reinforced, the black guy gets to complain of Korean racism, and Tom gets to yell that America is acting like Korea’s conqueror.
Ho-hum.
8:48 pm on July 15th, 2011 39
ChickenHead wrote:
You’re right. Nobody else ever — ever! — tries to mimic that. Especially not bottom-economic-rung African migrants who would want to pose as African-Americans to go up a few notches of perceived socioeconomic status.
When I saw Nigerians doing hip-hop at Chungking Mansions, that was my imagination.
You’re right. I never do that.
8:56 pm on July 15th, 2011 40
Is eating permitted on the train? It’s kinda messy.
The girl is obviously not afraid – she laughs at the fool.
He could be an Asian in dark make-up and wearing what he thinks will look like a Nigerian costume.
9:03 pm on July 15th, 2011 41
Take out all the black guys in your military and I’m sure at least 80% of the GI problems in Korea would be solved. I guarantee.
The white guys, as sanctimonious as they are, are at least half civilized in public most of the time. It’s the black ones that are the real problems. There, I said something what everyone is thinking but are afraid to.
10:03 pm on July 15th, 2011 42
Tom – you are so out of touch with reality it’s very sad and hilarious at the same time.
You obviously have ZERO experience with GIs in particular and Americans in general. Your entire perspective relies solely on what you read and see on tv.
Sad…very sad.
11:17 pm on July 15th, 2011 43
Well, half the regular commenters on here talk about how checking the names of the people who commit GI crimes is instructive. Tom is just echo-amplifying what a lot of ROKHEADs claim about non-white and non-asian americans.
11:51 pm on July 15th, 2011 44
Tom wrote:
kangaji wrote:
So you’re saying that Tom is just echoing the sentiments of half the regular members here – who supposedly think that 80% of the GI problems in Korea would be solved if there were no black US service members in Korea??
That’s complete BS.
9:48 am on July 16th, 2011 45
Just so everyone knows I have put Tom on moderation because of his race baiting. There is no evidence that black soldiers commit more crime in Korea.
You can look back at recent major incidents like the Dongducheon grandma sexual assault which was caused by a Pacific-Islander. The Dongducheon rapist was a Korean-American. The Hongdae grandma rape was by a Hispanic. Juicy girls that were murdered were by white guys. The Shinchon stabbing incident was a white guy. The Osan shakedown was a buy a white Lieutenant.
I could go on and on with examples off the top of my head but there is absolutely no evidence that black servicemembers commit an inordinate amount of crime in Korea. Heck I can probably make a stronger argument that Korean-Americans cause more trouble than black servicemembers than the argument Tom is making based off a YouTube video of a possible black US servicemember acting stupid on the subway.
10:36 am on July 16th, 2011 46
#45 Good idea GI Korea.
11:17 am on July 16th, 2011 47
Guitard,
Yes. That was a pretty big stretch on my part. good call.