I was wrong.

I have several posts on here that mention or talk about blood money. The last one saw The Korean from Ask A Korean respond. After reading what he said I had to think about why I call it blood money and just why I blamed the system, in Korea, for the way things are handled.

I could come up with excuses for why I tried to defend calling it blood money and raging against the Korean system. But they would just be excuses. There are reasons, some kind of silly when I look back now, but I am not going to make excuses.

What The Korean said makes sense. I could have tried arguing against it but I would have been doing something I berate others for doing, denying reality. While I had read the post on his site I never really processed it. For whatever reasons I never laid my own bias aside when I read it. Luckily I have never claimed to be infallible and this is a good example of it.

I was blaming instances of people abusing the system or making errors in judgement on the system being wrong, even evil. I was using it as a whipping boy for things that pissed me off. In short, I was putting the blame on the wrong things.

(After posting and re-reading this I came to the conclusion that the title I used sucks. "My blood money argument" is kind of ... bleh. So I changed it to what it now reads. "I was wrong." )

What the ... lack of justice system?!?!?

Surely this article must be mistaken. After all, AskAKorean and his cronies were all over me for talking about blood money, how it is abused, and how Korean officials (police, judges) try to force you to take it or take it into account when you are sentenced. I was wrong. I needed to be informed and educated on the matter.

If the incident with the bus driver wasn't enough to show those folks how wrong THEY were now there is a suicide where a settlement played a role. A woman was raped twice. Once by her rapist then again by the system in the form of the judge in the trial.

The note, which was released to the Dong-A Ilbo today after being sent to her family and the judge, runs six pages and says that “the judge insulted me when he sided with the man who raped me and pushed me to accept a settlement.” Ms. Byun also wrote that “the judge refused to believe me because he said ‘you didn’t graduate middle school and just lived as a helper in a noraebang’… I may have come from difficult family circumstances and not had a chance to study much, but I am absolutely not a liar or someone who would put blame on a stranger.”

Ms. Byun also wrote that “the judge said that ‘Mr. Jin is a nice young man who works in a company’ and that I was a slut who was ruining his life to make money… I have worked so hard in my life and made a lot of money so I don’t need money.” She then wrote that “if you can’t believe me then what are you doing in court… you think if a person in a noraebang is raped then they were a temptress?”

Nothing like blaming the victim for their situation. She was trying to get him convicted of rape. The judge was trying to force her to accept a settlement and the piece of shit said she was ruining the guys life for money? What the kimchi?!?!?!?

I can't say that I am sadly surprsied by the story. The Korean lack-of-Justice System has a history of bullshit like this. Whether it is accepting the excuse of rapists that they were drunk, taking the OFFER of blood money into account when sentencing, or the way rapist doctors DON'T lose their license to practice medicine after being convicted. It is a pretty fucked up system over there.

What the ... justice?!?!?

Ah the South Korean lack of justice system. Sometimes truth IS stranger than fiction.

A male student on a bus was trying to molest a female student. When another female stopped it he attacked her. The bus driver then got involved and the attacker ended up being injured. Who do you think ended up in trouble?

In the civilized world it would have been the molester. However, this happened in South Korea so of course the Bus Driver who stopped the molester ended up charged and convicted because he injured the molester.

Why did it end up with him being charged? The MOLESTER was injured when the driver intervened AND, according to the court, he didn't come to any settlement with the student. He refused to pay blood money to the rapist piece of shit and THAT gets held against him. What a fucking joke.

THIS is why you don't get involved in anything in South Korea. Let the mooks rape and beat themselves even mroe senseless than they are if it doesn't have something directly to do with you and yours. (Oh and for the KKKunts "yours" means your friends/family. Not your race.) I hate to say it but it just isn't worth it, in South Korea, to be the get involved.

Interesting TIMES's article.

A tip of the Santa Hat to Brian for posting a TIME article. (TIME magazine not the piece of shit we know as the Korea Times which is part of the problem.) It seems that the issue of ONLY testing E2- VISA holders for HIV in South Korea has reached TIME magazine. As has the bile the Anti-English Spectrum assholes perpetuate.

There are a few things in the TIME article I have trouble with.

More than a century later, South Korea, a thriving nation of 50 million, is coming to terms with a different sort of outsider: foreign English teachers.

I don't see them coming to grips with it yet. If you look at the government policies and media bullshit the anti-foreigner sentiment is being encouraged and perpetuated rather than seeing Koreans coming to terms with it in a rational manner.

"Lee, of course, doesn't speak for all — or even most — Koreans."

Actually, I found he does speak for a lot of Koreans. Thanks to the anti-foreigner shit spread by the Korean media it has heightened their natural xenophobia when it comes to foreigners. This was picked up by the government as well as some companies who also pander to it and give it legitimacy.

But every few years, a fresh wave of anti-foreign teacher sentiment shines a light on the nation's lingering xenophobia.

Except it hasn't been every few years. It has been pretty constant the last few years. The HIV test wasn't introduced this year nor is the controversy over it new. What is new is that the Korean government has basically admitted to how much bullshit it really is, and that they don't see foreigners as a real threat. They are just pandering to the xenophobic bullshit.

"We've decided to ease the rules as HIV is not transmitted through air or water but through human contact most of the time," a health official official told the press last month. Another official from the Ministry of Education also waffled on the reasons for keeping the teacher tests: Mandatory HIV/AIDS testing for foreign English teachers "does not mean the government regards foreign teachers to be HIV positive or have the potential of transmission," he said. "It is just intended to assure the parents."

We know you aren't a threat but because Koreans are so bigoted when it comes to foreigners we are going to treat you like you are one. Unless you marry a Korean, in that case you aren't a threat. Like I said ... not rational.

Overall it was an interesting article and it is nice to see some of the bullshit foreigners deal with in Korea being discussed in the western media.

What a difference.

What a difference being sick in Canada compared to South Korea.

I got sick Wednesday. It struck out of no where. Nausea. Chills. Aches. Extremely tired. Gas. Good god the gas. I took something for the aches and fever. Ate dry toast. Drank water. And stayed in bed. (Or on the futon.) Within 24 hours I was starting to feel better. By day 2 it had passed for the most part.

In South Korea umpteen people would have been telling me to go see a doctor. All the doctor would have done is given them a needle in the hip. It would have given them analgesics, vitamins, and distilled water. Maybe they would have gotten something for nausea. Nothing you can't get on your own here, or in Korea.

Due to the ease of access Koreans go to the doctor more easily than Canadians or other Westerners. They go to the doctor for the sniffles. For a common cold. There really isn't anything a doctor can do for a cold or a 24 hour bug that you can't get at a pharmacy and take care of yourself. Really, you don't even need the pharmacy. Rest and liquid is the most important.

No doctor. No problem.

Huffington Post mentions AES

There was an interesting article in the Huffington Post today about South Korea's contradictory, or some might say hypocritical, policies concerning aids.

It seems that Korea has pledged to lift the travel ban on aids infected people but haven't actually passed any legislation that would make it legally binding. Add to that their mandatory aids test for ONLY foreign teachers. One which could soon be expanded to apply to ALL foreign workers in Korea. But not Koreans.

It was also interesting to see Anti-English Spectrum being discussed and exposed as the racist piece of shit we all know it to be.

"Critics of the bill, like Wagner, take issue with its purpose statement that reads, "Nowadays, the number of foreigners working in Korea is increasing, but a good many have previous convictions for drug and sexual crimes or carry infectious diseases." Wagner traces the statement's origin to Anti-English Spectrum's efforts to stigmatize foreigners as AIDS-infected, sexually abusive predators. To this day, no foreigner has ever been found guilty of infecting a Korean child with HIV, and in 2008 the native English teacher crime rate was more than five times lower than the Korean crime rate."

While it is nothing new to those of us in Korea that AES is a racist organization it is nice to see it being exposed more outside of Korea. Especially when you look at the politicians here using their fabricated facts to help make policy.

Korean Law at Home and Abroad

In a post I made mention of Koreans enforcing their laws in other countries. That was not entirely true. What happens is that even if something is legal in the country you do it in, if it is illegal in Korea and they find out you did it legally in another country, you CAN and WILL be charged in Korea.

There are two cases that happened in the mid to late 2000's that come to mind.

The first concerned a hagwon teacher and was brought to prominence by Marmots Hole. A korean teenager was surfing porn sites and saw a video with his hagwon teacher having sex with a foreigner. He reported it to the Seoul Metropolitan Police web site. The woman, known in Canada as Almond Tease, was arrested and charged for violating Korea's pornography laws.

I believe the law states you can only make crappy soft core porn that must seem like rape 75% of the time. She made good old western hard core porn IN Canada. With full penetration and no blurring. And it was made available via the web IN Canada. So of course she was charged with breaking the laws of Korea even though it happened in Canada.

Then you have the case of the Korean guy who was in the Netherlands. He tried ... marijuana. And blogged about it. It doesn't matter that he smoked it in the Netherlands where it is LEGAL. He is Korean and lives in Korea so of course he was charged for breaking the law for doing something that was LEGAL in the country he did it.

So beware of what you have done LEGALLY because if it isn't legal in Korea you could be in trouble. No wonder they have a snitch web site. They need to know what you have done regardless of where.

I tend to laugh at Koreans now who go on about America forcing it's will on others. What the hell do they think this is?