A court in the southwestern city of Jeonju sentenced a man to a 5-million won ($3,720) fine for filming sex with a female high school student, allegedly done without her knowledge.
The man met a 17-year-old high school student through an Internet chatting room. They went to a motel in Gunsan City, North Jeolla Province, on Jan. 25 last year. He filmed his sex act with her using his cell phone.
Story in Korean here. I'm not sure which category to use for this post: the "things that would get a foreigner crucified but that warrant a relatively light punishment when done by a Korean" one, or the "good news almost never comes out of Jeonju" one.
12 comments:
I imagine there was a bit of, uh, sponsorship to this little tryst as well. That didn't go punished either.
the "things that would get a foreigner crucified but that warrant a relatively light punishment when done by a Korean" one
I'm sorry, Brian, but I really take issue with that whole meme. There are some very high profile cases where some "foreigner" or other has gotten screwed over (the guy who was at the center of the controversy where he apparently touched his own wife's ass on the subway in the 1990s comes to mind).
But there are also loads of cases where cases involving "foreigners" are dealt with quietly and lightly the same as a Korean's would, but you don't hear about it in the press. The press by its nature picks out the more sensational stories — either sensational because of the severe punishment or sensational because the perpetrator seems to be getting off lightly and thus a public outcry comes.
What you typically don't read about is subsequent sentence reductions (like the alleged murderer in the brutal killing of prostitute Yun Kŭmi (윤금이), whose 40-year sentence was quietly reduced to 14 years.
And what you don't read about is the light treatment that many foreigners get because they are foreigners. Oh, if the press ever gets wind of the police not doing sobriety tests on foreign-looking people at checkpoints, it will be most unpleasant.
So, yeah, I'm a little loath to bash Korea over a hypothetical that hasn't happened. It only adds to the cognitive distortion that builds up the persecution complex so many foreign residents have in Korea. I'm not saying shit doesn't happen — I've had my own share of shit — but it's not nearly as bad as it's often made out to be.
Sorry, but I'm still reeling from the idiot Chungang University lecturer who went to the press about getting around the medical checkup — and her reasons why she thinks it's a human rights violation (when a wide range of Koreans are subject to similar medical privacy intrusions).
Kushibo are you trying to say that sentences only get lightened for foreigners? Because that would be idiotic. How about this: how many foreign professors or teachers do you think have been reinstated after any kind of allegations of sexual improprieties? How about zero. It is the norm with Koreans. I've heard of and know of several cases. And foreigners get the sobriety tests. Again I've witnessed many. As far as the new immigration rules as well as the new cameras in schools with foreigners, speakers visiting schools and telling kids what to do when foreigners touch you incorrectly, exactly NONE of this is motivated by the same reasons Korean people get medical tests. The only thing hypothetical that hasn't happened here is people bashing Korea over something hypothetical that hasn't happened.
Dave wrote:
Kushibo are you trying to say that sentences only get lightened for foreigners? Because that would be idiotic.
Yeah, that would be pretty idiotic. About as idiotic as someone misinterpreting "dealt with quietly and lightly the same same as a Korean's would" to mean that "sentences only get lightened for foreigners."
No, Dave, my point was that the vast majority of the cases that don't end up in the media are dealt with similarly. My personal anecdotal experiences witnessing my own cases and others' in the police and judicial systems and what I've seen of academic reviews of Korean judicial cases (mostly in a course on criminology in Korea, but also through an association with a noted criminologist in Korea who is of the opinion that Korean outrage over the SOFA is misplaced).
Both Koreans and non-Koreans tend to get their fines and punishments lightened if they do certain things, particularly if they apologize to victims and/or show contrition and/or demonstrate hardship.
Lightening is different from the "light treatment" I later referred to, which is something people who appear not to be Korean or appear not to speak Korean benefit from in a very disproportionate way.
How about this: how many foreign professors or teachers do you think have been reinstated after any kind of allegations of sexual improprieties? How about zero. It is the norm with Koreans. I've heard of and know of several cases.
How many do you know of personally, where you have heard the details first hand from both sides (e.g., the school and the teacher)?
I suspect that many or most that you know are ones you've heard of, and then you get into the cognitive distortion angle. There are several things at work here, among them that Korean schools not punishing their teachers are a source of outrage that gets them into the press and foreign nationals who are easily hired into the system committing (or being accused of committing) are a source of outrage.
Schools that quietly dispatch a person after he/she has been legally found to have committed sexual improprieties don't typically end up in the press, so you only hear about the system failures, thus leading to cognitive distortion.
Another thing at work is that the E-visa and F-visa "foreign" hirees are in a completely different set-up from the bulk of long-term teachers and administrators who have passed through several government service hoops and may be supported by a union, thus making them harder to fire for allegations that don't lead to criminal convictions or civil fines. Not so with (a) foreign teachers who are on a temporary ad hoc basis or (b) Korean "irregular" teachers who are on by-semester or annually renewed contracts.
That is the source of a big part of the problem right there in terms of ending abusive activities: the tenured teachers can get away with a lot of stuff and some try, while the ones who would bring up the complaints about the tenured teachers' behavior are Korean teachers (or in some cases foreign teachers) with virtually no standing in the school. Yeah, it's dysfunctional and there are people working to change it, at least in their own schools, but it's not a Korean-versus-foreigner thing.
And foreigners get the sobriety tests. Again I've witnessed many.
Yes, so have I. But there are also many times that they don't. Cops see a blond-haired guy in a car or on a motorcycle and they wave them on by. It doesn't happen all the time, but it happens so often that I've heard several White people brag that they don't worry about sobriety checkpoints when they've had something to drink because they almost never get forced to blow into the device.
One blonde friend (who is White), who does not drink, was so shocked the first time she was asked to actually blow into the device that she almost hyperventilated.
If I had to put a number to what percent get waved on by, I'd put it between 30 and 70%, but it's just a guess. I also get the impression that the percentage that are waved on by is going down.
As far as the new immigration rules as well as the new cameras in schools with foreigners,
Doesn't almost every school have at least one foreigner? Are you suggesting they're only putting in cameras because foreigners are there? Korea is a CCTV-mad society, approaching Britain in its mindset, but you think it's all about foreigners in the school?
speakers visiting schools and telling kids what to do when foreigners touch you incorrectly,
Seriously, I'd like to hear more about this. What was said, the context, etc.
exactly NONE of this is motivated by the same reasons Korean people get medical tests.
That was quite a jump, so I'm not sure what you're getting at. Koreans routinely get HIV tests and other privacy-violating health checkups at several points in their young lives, among them when they first enter service in companies and the military.
The only thing hypothetical that hasn't happened here is people bashing Korea over something hypothetical that hasn't happened.
Well, if I suggested that Brian was bashing Korea, then I apologize. I was addressing the meme, not the man. I think Brian is a level-headed person who tries to take an objective approach at what he sees as injustice and unfairness around him, but which is balanced by good stuff he witnesses as well. Frankly, I don't know how he came to be labeled angriest blogger, unless Marmot was the only other person running.
I was simply trying to make what is a valid point about cognitive distortion, which happens at the level of the press and at the blogging and commenting level. The result is that it's very easy to start feeling persecuted and it's very easy to ignore the mitigating circumstances and especially the positives that are also at work, or for that matter, the equally discriminatory favorable treatment one receives by being not Korean.
I think the drug issue is a good one in this regard. At heart is a very different view toward narcotics, particularly marijuana. What many "foreigners" see as xenophobic persecution is the result of fervent execution of Korea's own war on drugs.
There is a strong sense of insecurity that people coming in and peripherally joining the education establishment are outside the controls that are in place for Korea-raised individuals, like criminal records, medical tests, etc. The media sometimes treats "foreigner" drug cases like they do drug cases involving Korean celebrities.
I say "sometimes" because I know from personal experience that at least some drug cases don't end up in the media at all. I was helping a half dozen in Taejon who were arrested for smoking pot (before I left Seoul for grad school here in Hawaii, I was sort of a trouble-shooter of sorts for a certain segment of people). Not only was this NOT in the Korean- or English-language media, we WANTED it to be... if their case is supposed to act as a deterrent (one of the models of punishment), it doesn't work if nobody knows about it.
And I think in the end this is one reason why I think ATEK is barking up the wrong tree. It is a good thing if foreign teachers are tested for drugs and other maladies about which an insecure public worries, because then you've got that clean bill of health, so to speak. Korea-raised teachers are subject to most or all of these same reviews, but through a different process, so it's not really an issue of discrimination.
Okay, I've gone on too long. I should save it for my own blog.
Well, though the guy sounds like a dick, and he's done this before apparently, I don't see the big deal. Not only that, I don't understand what it's got to do with the price of tea in china.
No one (in theory) should be fucking 17 year old girls on video, foreign or local. If one is jealous of someone who is privileged in the punishment they receive, that does not compute to me. Don't fuck kids in general. Problem solved.
Having said that, the article mentions that the video never made it to the internet. I think a lot of the sensation we're seeing these days on these topics and the governments treatment of them speak a lot about the government's growing understanding of the potential dangers of an internet society like the one found in Korea. Dunno... just something i've been mulling
Well, though the guy sounds like a dick, and he's done this before apparently, I don't see the big deal.
Ha ha... I was looking at my emails too fast, and I thought this statement was about Daniel Henney.
Wow Kushibo! Did I touch a nerve? Seriously though I see little in your magnum opus that is really on topic. Brian categorized the story as things that would get a foreigner crucified but not a Korean and he was right. You took issue and I think you were wrong. There's no mysterious, deeply sociological or psychological explanation for why foreigners, (and Koreans), would say or think this. Just common sense. Ask some Koreans, they know too. It's just not a level playing field in this kind of case. Terms like "meme" and "cognitive distortion" sound impressive but you won't convince me there's anything here that only a gifted few are party to and the rest of us don't see. I agree there are lots of unpublicized cases that we don't know of and I'm sure foreigners catch some breaks. But let's look at one we know of. The three scumbags in Cheongju who repeatedly raped their mentally disabled granddaughter/niece for 7 years, from the time she was 9 and got a collective zero days in jail and will probably have her released back into her custody. I tell you what, I would rather have Christopher Neil as a babysitter than any of these three. This story was downplayed in the media if anything. So we see it works both ways.
Now do you honestly suppose a foreigner could ever get a sentence like that in Korea? Preponderance of evidence and common sense will tell you nope. Any foreigner would be crucified for much less. Like for doing what the guy in this story did: filming sex with a student.
BTW good word "meme". I had to look it up. Gonna try to use it in future. Thanks.
Well, Dave, we'll have to agree to disagree. But as a final point, what you're doing is the very definition of how reliance on the press (and discussions of what is in the press) leads to cognitive distortion.
You know of the Ch'ŏngju case because it was in the press and it was discussed a great deal in the blogosphere. But it was in the press and discussed in the blogosphere precisely because of how outrageous it was, not for how typical it was.
Analogies are always problematic, but let's take another highly publicized case, the OJ Simpson trial. From that well-known and heavily discussed case, I can conclude that Blacks on trial for double murders are easily acquitted. Right? Of course not: the atypical nature of the case made it the target of sensationalism.
The myriad unpublicized cases — the ones that are not publicized because they are not noteworthy, they don't involve famous people, or there is no sensational angle — are the ones that are typical cases. You said you know of some things first hand, so let's talk about those.
But then we would have to find real cases with similar circumstances involving a Korean teacher. If the foreign teacher you know is not part of a union and is not in the "public servant" tracking system which is difficult to get into but offers serious job protections, then we would have to compare it with a Korean who is an ad hoc "irregular employee" teacher, who doesn't have that kind of protection. I know of such a case first hand, a teacher at the same school as a freelancer who works with me. He lost his job after complaints that a former student was still being harassed by him, after which he committed suicide. I don't think that one was in the papers, at least not the English-language press.
And no, you didn't strike a nerve. I've had to help people with legal problems (more as an ombudsman; I'm not a lawyer) and there is a way to navigate the system. If you (a) think the system or the Koreans running the system are out to get you because you're a foreigner or (b) you try to buck the rules that generally apply to Koreans when they go through the system (e.g., contrition, apology, mitigating circumstances) because you think you know better, you are destined for EPIC FAIL.
Toward that end, I think Brian or anybody perpetuating the meme found in condition (a) is detrimental. Yes, I've seen it work both ways, and 90% of cases fall into either (a) success because they dovetailed with what a Korean would do if in the same legal situation or (b) much harsher fines and/or sentencing because they didn't. I'm talking about cases I know of first hand, not sensationalized cases I've read in the papers or on a blog, which are by nature atypical.
So, after a few thought-beers, Ive come to this conclusion. Kushibo is generally right about a lot of things in that his interest doesnt seem to coincide with the poor foreign slighted teacher who knows of someone who may have got screwed. and while his smugness makes me want to punch myself in the sack, it's hard to dismiss well researched, experientially acquired knowledge. So presuming I'm not missing the mark here completely, I'm going to have to say to dave, in my most humble yet sexy opinion, we do tend to conflate the micro with the macro, coming from a fear culture like that in North America (I assume youre canadian) We tend to confuse what is sensationalized and what is a reality on the ground. Also, being standard dudes, we like to dismiss academic words that neatly describe what the average observant person must often reference with out explaining.
In my anecdotal experience.. if you could say one might have such a thing, I learned so much stupid shit about Korea that wasn't true before I came. From my sister, who was stationed in TDC in the 90s(speaking of 윤금이). And I hate to pull the race card, but its always there. Actually I don't hate pulling that one cause it causes the most 'fun'. oddly, its not that unusual that racists have persecution complexes. It comes from a fear of inadequacy.
And theres a guy samuel. Everytime I write something based on fact he says 'That doesnt even make sense!'
Seriously, Korea is a mostly homogenized society. It has it's flukes, many of the borne of cultural traditions that won't vanish the moment you piss and moan about them. They also have a great understanding of what their status quo is and they milk it. Good for them, its efficient. Foreigners, great people, but are real shit at taking a deep look at the place their in and thus scream and cry when they don't get their cake to eat. Thats us, thats what we do. but we are the exception, not the rule. And it makes perfect sense to attempt to accomodate in whatever sense, the exception.
GET OVER IT! So you do the same thing that a korean has done and you get it worse. Who the fuck do you think you are that you can be special enough to get it the same? You don't exist. You're a faceless historiless slob in a noman's land designed for someone else.
I really like brian's readings on certain topics. And most of the time, I tend to agree with him. But the fucking peanut gallery in this place... ugh.
I know this supposed to be a place for ex-pats to vent and discuss the issues. But really, it seems more like a highway rest stop sometimes. You might only wank each other on the inside, but when you come out, we all know you're still seething with a certain lust that makes jesus blush.
ativan out!
Nik
Everytime, Nik?--that makes no sense.
Hahahaha. Well said Sammy. Sorry about that. Just broke up with the old lady...
And the ativan... and wine. and beer. Got to love a love for Korea
Nik, sorry to hear about the girlfriend. Right now I'm MSNing a Korean friend back in Seoul who is all distraught because her boyfriend just left her. My heart goes out to people with broken hearts.
You did seem to get more than just the gist of what I was saying. Good rewording, especially for a drunken post.
And I am the smuggest sombitch you'll ever meet.
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