As warned in a previous post this is a long story. While it is about the events of one night the repercussions were felt over a period of months. So I am breaking it up into sections. This is the first part. It is mainly the lead in to what happened.
My friends wouldn't want their names used so I am using fake names for them. They would rather forget it ever happened. I will never forget it happened or the lessons I learned.
Let me introduce my friends. First the "foreign" contingent (God only knows why but Koreans can't seem to have just friends, they must be pigeon holed as Korean friends or foreign friends. This should make my writings Korean friendly. :)) The Canadians Dave, Matt, and Hilda. The Koreans DongChim and BumSuk.
The antagonists were all Korean. They are Immigration Boy (sometimes called Immi Boy), Katusa Boy, fucktard 1, Fucktard 2, Ricetard 1, and Ricetard 2.
And now on the the story.
It was the end of my first year in Korea. I was supposed to be getting the 6AM bus to Incheon in the morning for a month home. Then I would return to start a new job.
A group of 6 us had gathered to celebrate my good bye. We sat around a friends apartment drinking and talking. We hadn't drank a lot, I wanted to make sure I could get up in time to get the 6AM bus. Well, Dave was a little toasted but he was in the happy drunk stage. Around midnight or so we decided to head out for kamjatang. There was a little shop run by a woman, her mother, and grand mother. Great place ... now gone. :(
The place was about half full when we got there. The largest group was 6 Koreans. One of them, Katusa Boy who was 7 sheets to the wind, decided to come over and make friends. There were no problems, he seemed to be happy drunk. He had latched onto Dave to be his new buddy.
A while later Katusa Boy's friends left. After a lengthy good bye he headed out too. A minute later he was back to inform us that we had to pay his friends bill. He started some BS saying Dave had said we would pay for them. He was politely told to piss off. Then he started getting mouthy, mainly in Korean. I understand some of what was said now but then I didn't. He was cursing us up and down. He moved towards Dave and made some threats while raising a fist. The two Koreans with us literally smacked him in the face. One on each side. It was kind of funny to see because it happened so fast and he was so shocked. His glasses popped up to his forehead.
Well, at that point his friends who were waiting outside started to come back in. Odds are he was sent in to provoke a reaction from us and it worked. (Our Korean friends never did translate what was said. They just said it was an insult that should never be used unless you are ready to fight.) This started a kind of see saw battle. They ran in yelling and threatening. Then they headed out with the adjumma screaming at them. Then some of them ran back in and left again. When we tried to leave they started in again. All in all there were 7-8 little incidents with someone being pushed down or around.
A little background on our attackers. No idea who 4 of them were but 2 stood out. One worked for immigration. All of us recognized him from their office. He was the main instigater of their group. Most of the time he stood back and egged his friends on in Korean, while telling us in English he wanted to stop them from fighting. How terrible it is. Basically a two faced piece of shit. He also knew we were not Americans. At one point early on I talked with him and he asked about where I was from. I told him that we were all from Canada (except the Koreans). He actually mentioned he saw us at Immigration.
The second guy was the one that came to our table to make friends. From what he told us he was in KATUSA. He asked the usual question about where we were from etc. So he also know that we weren't Americans before they started their bullshit.
I have mentioned that they knew we weren't Americans because it came out that the reason the decided to attack us was because they wanted to beat up some Americans or at least their Korean friends.
.... to be continued ....
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