"Sexy Mong" battles drunk foreigners, interracial relationships.

As first reported by The Marmot's Hole, the first episode of the latenight softcore detective show 섹시몽리턴즈 (Sexy Mong Returns) dealt with foreign English teachers taking advantage of drunk Korean women in nightclubs. Mr. Koehler translated a paragraph from one of the Korean papers:

The first episode of “Sexy Mong Returns,” a four-part series to run every Wednesday and Thursday starting from April 23, is already drawing attention as its deals with an episode involving sexual assault by foreign English teachers, something that has been a social issue for some time.

I caught part of the episode tonight, and it featured a lot of groping and petting, a bit of nudity, and lots and lots of mangled Engrish. Actually, from what I can tell there was only one native English speaker. The other white guy was European and incomprehensible, and the other "American" was a Korean. The line "I only know about kimchi and Korean girls" belonged to him and his marble-mouthed gibberish. He ended up being the serial rapist, and admitted pretending to be a foreigner in order to pick up women, but wasn't "exposed" until the end, after he slapped around a topless Sexy Mong co-star. As for the white guy molesting a passed-out, topless woman in the club, I don't recall if he spoke at all. And of course we were treated to some of the worst bastardized English you'll find on TV.

You know, there aren't many examples of interracial relationships on Korean television between white men and Korean women---none, actually, that I can think of---and so this was a disappointing, degrading introduction. Ironic topic on a show that stars Djamilya, a shameless foreign woman who gained a small amount of fame in Korea via the TV show 미녀들의수다, a program that pretty much boiled down to Korean guys ogling foreign women. Establishing an Eastern European woman as a lead character, and giving her a nude shower scene and tons of opportunities to bend over and shove things in her mouth, while having a line of white people dry humping naked Korean women can't be construed as anything other than extreme disapproval of and disgust at interracial relationships between foreign men and Korean women.



I'd like to remind you, too, of 아냐, a 23-year-old Russian co-starring on the softcore porn show "5 Girls." I was called a racist for writing "she's just around for decoration and for poking," though I dare anyone to contest the roles of either women on these shows. They are softcore porn programs, after all, and so if they're not playing on these women's sex appeal, they're at least playing on their foreignness . . . oh, and on their exotic sex appeal.

So, yeah, a big fuck you to the foreign assholes who decided to flush the reputation of white people down the toilet for a few greenbacks. Cool, you got to feel up a Korean woman on TV, I hope it was worth it. In the meantime you helped perpetuate a very ugly, very common stereotype that does very real damage to a lot of us. Your faces are going up here if I get a screen capture because you deserve to be called out. A big fuck you to the foreigners who continue to go on Korean TV and make complete asses of themselves, our language, and our culture. Not that you give a damn. A big fuck you to those who make shows like these, and who can't seem to stay away from spicing up your programs with foreign women and foreign languages while slandering them at the same time.

This particular episode could have drawn its inspiration from any number of inflammatory sources. I suppose the most newsworthy was a YTN report from last year on "disgraceful foreigners" in Hongdae. But as Mr. Koehler rightly points out, and which is played out in the 섹시몽 episode, the real reason for this anti-foreigner sentiment is their imagined sexual immorality and the fear that strikes in the hearts of far too many. From a 2005 article titled "A one night stand paradise for foreigners," and kindly translated by The Marmot's Hole:

Hongdae is now an area hot with youthful passion that has degenerated from being mixed up with foreigners. As the recent act of indecent exposure by a punk band on live TV showed, the diversity and individuality of the area in front of Hongik University is nowhere to be found. As the number of foreigners with more of an interest in booking and one night stands than in the music increases, there are many women coming to the clubs in search of “blue-eyed men.”

Just a reminder that the show went ahead with this angle in the context of a city with wall-to-wall love motels and massage parlors, one in which prostitution is an accepted fact of life, and in a country that was named a "danger country" in terms of women's public safety by the OCED. I'm being facetious when I say that I don't think you can blame all that on unruly English teachers. Wasn't too long ago that we heard news of a middle school girl held captive and raped by 800 men, and it was last night's paper that taught us that you can beat a rape charge by folding her jeans when you're done.

Yes, I know it's just a latenight, softcore porn show, but that doesn't make its ugly stereotypes any less televised.

* Update 1: Otto has a write-up of Episode 2 here.