Gordsellar and Fantasy -
I'm of both minds about the subject, as I am about many things, and as the complexity of life makes inevitable.
On the one hand, I think there are certain types of people who attract trouble more than others, for reasons that they can control (not having that "I'm better than Koreans" swagger or just giving off an air of haughtyness that is different from most people here and mostly a function of having a very high opinion of oneself.
On the other, there are people I know who get messed with all the time, but just fit a magical profile of one 1) many Korean folks not liking your "look" (being white, having 1/4 inch of hair, and wearing young clothes) and 2) looking like you can be messed with (i.e. being not a huge build and/or being alone or with a Korean woman).
Unfortunately – and tellingly – being with a Korean woman in public greatly increased one's chances of being verbally and physically attacked. I know it from ample stories told by friends, as well as personal experience. As I've posted about before, I avoid the subway if I can, yet still find myself getting yelled at or fucked with by certain people – albeit drunk assholes, but if you just don't want to be fucked with, who's making distinctions?
But if you're with a Korean woman and she's – oh, boy – considered attractive by most Korean men, you WILL GET VERBALLY ASSAULTED and possibly worse. And I think it's a statistical game. Yes, say there are only 1/10,0000 Koreans you meet would ever think of doing this to a foreign couple, how many people do you meet in a day?
I think the distinction you make, Fantasy, is apropos: if you are a normal dating couple - meaning you meet 1-3 times per week, hang out in busy public places, and are in situations where you find lots of other couples and people busy doing their own thing, you should be fine, which is where the situation masks itself. But if you are married and go everywhere from emart to the local subway stop together, you're gonna get it.
For that reason – as well as because I'm a typical American bachelor who has spent inordinate amounts of my income on home theater equipment and other electronic creature comforts and live alone – when I've had a Korean girlfriend, we generally stay at home with the DVD player or electronic game box, cook our own food or order in, play with the cats, have a pretty domestic lifestyle. So we don't go out all that much.
But we do go out, to catch a new flick, hit a new restaurant, or do whatever couples normally do. To the extent that I we would go out – and that's not a whole heckuva lot – I still get messed with. And it's often not so obvious as being verbally assualted, since I think, as a larger guy, I tend to filter out all but the most obnoxious or inebriated.
But I get this – on several distinct occasions, I've had a Korean man tell my girlfriend that I cheat on her. It's enraging when she tells me later, but two separate girlfriends (no, I wasn't cheating, but dated two different girls over 2 years, which isn't exactly unusual in this country or anywhere else) have told me this. The ajussi downstairs told my ex – and it was one of the reasons she became my ex – that he told her all the time that I "came in with different girls" and that I was cheating on her, dump me. This is the ajussi ("security guard") who looks at me funny if I am walking in with any female – tomboyish American female friend from Fulbright (I still live almost next door, since I just found the nearest officetel, of which there weren't all that many in the area, when I moved out four years ago) who comes over in the middle of the day to raid my DVD collection and is there for 30 minutes on her lunch break, or one of many, many work connections or colleagues who comes over for something much more professional than riding the pony with me for 20 minutes, which is what the ajussi thinks I do with every single female – Korean or not – I enter the building with.
The point here isn't old-fashioned notions of gender relations or me just "looking at things from his point-of-view." The relevant point here is made when you think about my OFFICETEL and the fact that I regularly see drunk-ass "couples" staggering in here from doing seedy things, older men who bring "sul-jip yuja" home with them or even "order in" from the many hooker ads placed on cars and on the building's windows, or the young Korean male dandies whom I myself see bringing in lovely young lasses to do – I assume from their demeanor – more than discuss political issues in a conversation class, which is generally the only way any such lasses have entered my home.
Point is, if I were a Korean guy, I wouldn't have even the bootleg DVD stand guy saying the same thing to my girlfriend when I went to the convenience store to grab some drinks. And that is total bullshit, because I had met that guy like three times, most likely with one of two American friends, who tend to be the only people who go with me to go shopping for electronics at Yongsan, who also has time during the day. All my American friends are purely platonic, no hint of a vibe of sexual relationship, real friends in the actual never-slept-together-never-will sense, not the TV-show "Friends" slept-with-each-other-but-not-these-days sense. Yet, he took his 2-minute opportunity to "break up with me" because I am a "playboy." If a Korean guy had shown up with 3 seprate girls over a span of like a year, I doubt he would have said anything.
In any case, those are two instances of many of Korean men trying to convince my female Korean companion to break up with me. And as for the fact that I've never been assualted on the subway, I know the rules in Korea: I never, ever, ever, EVER take the subway with my girlfriend. EVER. For me, it's a rule I learned in Korea: If you want to avoid conflict, the #1 way to do that in this country is to be an obviously foreign male with a Korean woman and take the subway. And if you're a tall white guy (which I'm not) with an attractive Korean girl – whoo, hoo boy. Ever since the "subway incident" of 1995 and from what I've heard from other foreign friends who who never take the subway with their wives, especially if they're considered "attractive" by the Korean male population, I know to not take the subway with Korean women – even if I'm not dating them.
For foreign couples, existing in certain public spaces – especially subways – means that you're going to deal with this sooner or later, especially if you are together all the time because you're married.
Funny enough, many Korean women think I'm paranoid, since they've never seen such things, since they've never hung out with a foreign dude on the subway before. Often, after an "incident," or at least some time spent together – people find out that I'm right – there is a difference in treatment.
Do I think this country is "evil"? No. Do I think most Koreans behave like this? No. Do I think most Koreans look negatively on foreign couples, but not do or say anything about it? ABSOLUTELY. And the people who would are the vast minority – but they are a vocal one, which is where the trouble begins.
And when blood "mixes" (whatever the fuck that means) – or you are the living breathing sign of blood having "mixed" (ok, ending scare quote usage now, but just imagine them there on your own, since I hate that racist concept) – people can't get the thought of illicit, interracial sex out of their forebrains.
Don't believe me? Go to "Half.Korean.com" and take a gander through the photo gallery. Yes, there's actually a photo gallery of "half" (whatever the fuck that means) Korean people.
Do I deny an element of curiosity on my own part when going here? Of course not.
Do I think it's racist? No, because that's not the intent. We could get into a long discussion of my definition of racism, but I'd rather not here.
Do I think such an enterprise is built upon racist assumptions? As a good friend of mine say, "Abso-fucking-lutely."
We all live and breathe these racist assumptions, whether Korean or non, whether "mixed race" or non.
And for all you people who want to just jump up and say "See! It's the same in X country!" I would still have to say that in all of the modern countries I've visited or lived for some time – one of them being Germany, by the way, where I dated a girl in high school – I've never felt in physical danger because of my race. And I apply that to the US as well, where sometimes I've felt uncomfortable, but I never felt like a room full of white folks was gonna lynch me or something – OK, there was the time when the guys in the pickup truck were harassing me when I was on my bike, or when a beer bottle was thrown at my head, but those were brief moments of dealign with idiots, not a sustained sense of danger.
In Korea, I repeat again – if three black GI's raped a Korean middle school girl like in Okinawa in 1995 – I WOULD NOT LEAVE MY HOUSE save in private transportation and I'd stay away from anywhere with lots of bars and people drinking.
Come on. What would happen in Korea? Would not all black men – from brown, round ones like me to the darkest of Nigerian Africans – be suddenly the "new scourge" of Asia? And all the notions of black violence, sexual virility-as-threat, and general danger-to-the-world instantly come out? (Actually, the Okinawans were far more reasonable about this horrible case than I think Koreans would be. And check out CNN circa 1996! Wow!)
And the racist Fighting 44's (assholes!) actually tried to say that me suggesting that there might be an actual difference in penis size between "races" (more accurately, cohorts of people sharing genetic traits at a higher rate of frequency than other self-defining groups that don't necessarily respond to our strict, social definition of "races", within which there is certainly often as much variation as across them) – that black men might have bigger ones – was actually "putting down" Asian men while bragging about the apparent sexual prowess of black men. Yeah, like either racist tool – whether grounded in fact or not – of the white power structure's notion of small Asian penises or large black ones has done anything other than keep Asian men "emasculated" and black men the same as they became "strange fruit" hanging from Southern trees.
Flip side of the same damn coin. Hello!?
Obviously, the symbolic penis and vagina still dominate these debates. The Fighting 44's are simply the most asinine about it.
I know for a fact that verbal and physical assaults in Korea shot through the roof in late 2002 (from endless reports of assaults through embassy alerts and the foreign press, as well as story after story from friends, as well as my own two eyes). I know for a fact that political concerns get acted out directly on the most "odious" examples of Korean-foreigner interaction – the symbolic "rape" of the nation by outside powers (the masculine nature of the nationalist discourse is so obvious, especially as it's represented through the iconic figure of the "comfort women" and the "fallen woman" of kijichon fiction).
In any case, one of the things that happens all the time is that fights ensue because of verbal attacks on one's Korean gf or wife. Anecdotal examples are always in abundance on subjects like this, but the sheer number and extremity of them is what is most scary.
The one I always related is of the former Mormon missionary who later ended up marrying a Korean woman (whom he met far after his mission was over in the US during his law school years). He was a former missionary, but not a former Mormon, and was very strict in the regulation of his behavior, diet, and words. He is truly a man of the Good Word, and always walks around speaking perfect and polite Korean, and wears a big smile on his face wherever he goes. He exudes goodness and cheer, which is pretty true of the young missionaries I've seen in Korea and other places.
But he's built like a linebacker and his wife is beautiful.
In 2003, he took the subway with his wife, she was verbally assaulted in a way that he could not even stomach repeating to me, and he apparently decked the guy. They made themselves scarce and he wasn't arrested – we both agree that they were lucky – but for him to have made it through 2 years of denying all of the temptations of his mission and living a life of his ideal of a Christian living true to his faith – I was pretty shocked. Needless to say, he wasn't too happy with that fact, either.
But from my perspective, what I was most disturbed about was the fact that if HE could be pushed to the point of hitting a guy, ANYONE could come to that point.
In Korea, and as a normal dude living here, what do you do if some dude calls your wife a "Yankee whore" or a "dirty, worthless slut?" Even if you don't deck the guy, you stew on that for the rest of your life if you don't. Yeah, I know I shouldn't buy into such archaic and partriarchal notions of masculinity. I know. But when some dude calls your wife a name like that – come on, what Korean man would accept that, either?
Yet, foreign men are expected to sit and take it. And if you react any differently, you just might end up in the newspaper.
Some people say, "well, if you don't like it, leave Korea!" Well, if and when I get married to a Korean woman, when I would not longer be able to avoid the situation, I probably will.
No matter what my life is like now – and I've got a pretty decent one, doing what I want to do as a single man with not major responsibilities to anyone other than myself – it all changes when someone else is involved. And the realistic thing is – Korea is still no place for foreign men who marry Korean women.
Sorry, but I'd have to agree with Fantasy on this one. This is a story I've heard too often – not that it's true for everyone, but it's true for way too many – to ignore. Maybe I'll catch less heat than a big, strapping white dude, but worrying about my wife's mental health and physical safety on a day-to-day basis as a function of me being a foreigner is not something I want to worry about.
I'll leave you with the story of a foreign couple I heard about who had a taxi driver drive them to some country road and force them out, leaving them stranded, yelling nationalistic BS.
Given the patriarchal, masculine nature of the extreme nationalists – which again, isn't the majority, but is a vocal minority – I would't want my gf or wife being the victim of an attempt to "re-Koreanize the nation" by force after she's seen with a "dirty" foreigner like me. I always make my Korean gf take a separate taxi if I go him first and she's to continue on home. I'm not stupid.
And if you still think this is paranoid, and that Korean folks don't generally get hyper-conservative when it comes to "purity" and "blood" – if you're a foreigner or with a foreign friend, go try to give blood to one of the little Red Cross ladies stationed around major places in Seoul. See if they take it. Either foreigners "have AIDS" or are somehow otherwise considered dirty, or it's thought to be a "dilution to the Korean blood" for foriegners to give it.
Come on. Do the dirty and dangerous. Walk on a Korean subway with a Korean girl you're involved with, or try to give blood today!
You may think I'm bashing Korea, but I simply think this is a stark, everyday reality for foreigners living here in Korea. The mixing of blood is not desired here. From this perspective, the two seemingly separate issues are quite related.
When the blood mixes is when people's true thoughts on the matter and raw emotions come out.
And that's true anywhere.
