What the ... hypocritical mook?!?!?

I was reading the latest post on Blackchild when I saw a link to one of his previous posts I had missed. Back then I was subscribed to a blog run by someone that tended to make a lot of inane posts. Thus causing a lot of spam and I would miss posts by others. But I digress.

Mike's post was about some of the BS foreigners face in South Korea. It was a good post, funny in parts. Especially how he dealt with the old mook on the bus.

In the comment section an Anonymous poster made some comments that had me writing a reply too lengthy for a comment section. So I am putting it here.

The anonymous Mook said

"ur so lucky that people pay attention to u. "

Evidently someone doesn't know the difference between good and bad attention. Pointing, staring, and harassing someoen isn't considered good attention by most people. From later comments of yours YOU didn't appreciate it.

Mr. Anonymous also seems to have missed the fact that when assistance was needed Koreans DIDN'T pay any attention.

"as an asian living in states i didnt have my native language conveniently posted everywhere or people try to speak my native tongue."

Be happy you didn't have hordes of people saying hello to you seemingly at random in the States. Shouting it repeatedly. Or people stopping you to practice their English by asking the same stupid questions the last 20 idiots asked and the next 20 will ask.

As for English being posted everywhere ... thanks for the laugh. Yes, there is a lot of English out there. However, there is a lot of BAD English out there too.

" people in states look at u funny automatically judge u bc dont speak perfect english."

Sounds like Koreans dealing with non-Koreans. I would guess you didn't appreciate that behaviour in the states so why should foreigners in Korea like it? When it comes to using Korean I have found a lot of Koreans do NOT want to speak Korean with you, they want to practice their English.

When you do use your Korea, no matter how good or bad your accent is many don't seem to understand you. I remember going to the corner store to get some bug spray. A Korean friend told me that all I have to do is ask for "combat", or as he said it "com bat uh". So I did. I asked about 20 times and the guy still didn't understand. So I called my friend who said exactly what I said but this time the guy understood. Or taxi drivers that don't understand when you say left or right in Korean. But if you say "leftuh" or "rightuh" they understand.

"dont expect koreans to adapt to ur ways. if your going to stay in korea u should learn their culture and language."

It is always funny to hear a Korean lecture about that. When in doubt blame the foreigner for not understanding Korean culture. What always made me laugh was when students went to study abroad and only left the Korean community to go to class. Which meant the only time they had to use English was in class. When they came back and would make comments like yours, how important it is for foreigners to learn the Korean Culture and language I would laugh at them.

For the most part foreigners aren't even asking Koreans to adapt to their ways. They want to be treated as a human being, not an animal in the zoo. They want to be treated politely. According to any Korean I asked it is rude to point at people in Korea. It is rude to stare. Yet, if you are a foreigner it happens all the time but it is ok because you aren't Korean. Like I told my students if it is rude to do it to another Korean it is rude to do it to anyone.

I love history and learning about other cultures. So I made a point of learning about Korean culture. Of course whenever anything came up I would be told "you don't understand Korean culture". Even when you were right.

As for learning the language, I learned enough to get by. However, the more I learned Korean the more I realized just how fucking rude so many of them were when they didn't think we understood them. (And to the apologists yes, Westerners do this too ... and when they do it around me I tend to tell them off. Two wrongs don't make a right.)

For a while this led me to actively stop learning Korean. Mike's reasoning was pretty close to mine. I wasn't out to learn Korean just to get in a woman's pants. Nor was I impressed with the way so many Koreans would not want to use Korean but insist on English, a lot of the time it felt like they just expected a free English lesson. More than a few times it was actually expressed that way ... "I practice Englishee on you."

So, Mr. Anonymous, your comments were kind of disjointed bordering on hypocritical. You complained because you were treated badly in the US but expect foreigners to just suck it up when in Korea. You sir are a fucking mook.