From the 서울신문.
Last month on a Gusts of Popular Feeling post about a video of a man on a subway groping a drunk woman sitting next to him, I wrote of the undercover cameraman:
I guess secretly snapping a picture is more useful than actually going across the aisle and putting a stop to the groping that's forcing another passenger to cower and curl up?
A story in the Korea Times today of a similar situation reminds us why it's a bad idea to interfere, physically, in a dispute in South Korea.
The Seoul Central District Court sentenced a 50-year-old bus driver to six months in jail, suspended for two years, after he injured a male student who molested a female passenger and then attacked a female escort on a school bus.
Last May, a male student at a school for the disabled, started groping and sexually harassing a female student who was sitting in front of him on the bus.
When a female employee from the school told the female student to change seats, the male student got angry and attacked her, pushing her down and pressing himself on top of her.
The driver stopped the bus, and went to intervene but ended up injuring the student’s eye in the process.
“Although the injury took place while the bus driver was trying to stop the male student from making a scene, he injured him and it required six weeks of hospital treatment. Also he did not come to any settlement with the student,” the court said in a ruling.
Teachers on Dave's ESL Cafe frequently post of their desires or intentions of physically intervening in a couple's public fight, or of punching a drunk guy harassing them, but it's a bad idea especially if the other person is, or pretends to be, injured.
4 comments:
"also he did not come to any settlement with the student"
I'm not cool with the whole blood money thing that happens in Korea. Really not cool with it.
I agree. Plain bribery really.
As to the other part of the story, I've been a poster at Dave's during comments about what type of situations you should or should not intervene in.
A good example is that recent attack by 3 high school girls on the store clerk. I can't imagine not intervening and even holding one of the kids until police came. It would no doubt be a mess but, even as a non-citizen here, isn't there a larger obligation to fellow human beings?
I also get that people are supposed to be respectful of those who are older but there ought to be a reciprocal piece no? Isn't wisdom and sensibility supposed to be part of the "senior package"?
I think I'd put up with quite a lot in terms of verbal abuse, restraint is certainly the way to go, but if someone starts puttin' hand on me then they may get an introduction to what being a member of the global village means.
There's been more than one occasion where I noticed girls in tense confrontations with another man. Not of the physical assault nature, but more like the guy can't let the girl go home. I always notice the girls looking very uncomfortable and stop and watch to see if it will escalate, though my only intention is to take pictures/video.
I'm more concerned about how I'd react if I saw children being physically harmed in public.
All right, I'm having problems with blogspot eating comments again.
Tide wrote:
"I agree. Plain bribery really.
As to the other part of the story, I've been a poster at Dave's during comments about what type of situations you should or should not intervene in.
A good example is that recent attack by 3 high school girls on the store clerk. I can't imagine not intervening and even holding one of the kids until police came. It would no doubt be a mess but, even as a non-citizen here, isn't there a larger obligation to fellow human beings?
I also get that people are supposed to be respectful of those who are older but there ought to be a reciprocal piece no? Isn't wisdom and sensibility supposed to be part of the "senior package"?
I think I'd put up with quite a lot in terms of verbal abuse, restraint is certainly the way to go, but if someone starts puttin' hand on me then they may get an introduction to what being a member of the global village means. "
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