Wednesday, July 28, 2010

(UPDATED) Once more, with feeling.

UPDATE:
Whoops! It looks like the Me Lee mentioned below is not the Mr Lee who founded Anti-English Spectrum (see my post and the Popular Gust post that set the record straight). 

ORIGINAL POST:

The Marmot reports that Anti-English Spectrum's xenophobically incendiary founder has scored another interview, this time from a minor Internet news outlet, and he really lets loose on some racist views:
But Lee, who looked around the clubs, noticed the foreigners’ intonation, way of speaking and level of vocabulary was strange. When he talked with them, most of them were from underdeveloped former British colonies in Africa and Southwest Asia, or running away after committing crimes in their own countries, or social misfits who were not properly educated. Lee says they told him to his face that “Korean Pussy is Best!” “Best” was a sarcastic way of saying “easy.” Seeing this, Lee said he founded the group to inform people about native English speaking teachers and the seriousness of the English flunkyism raging in our society.
Switch this around and make Lee a gringo railing on darker folks in his midst in order to warn us about illegal and/or unqualified Mexicans, and I'd have a serious problem with this guy (and sadly, that's an awful lot of gringos in OC).

Hmm... what to do... what to do? Oh, maybe get this guy's organization listed as a hate group. What a wonderful idea.

I did find this part interesting...
Because the media isn’t reporting how dangerous Itaewon is, there’s lots of Korean women loitering about Itaewon on a Friday or Saturday night looking to hook up with foreign dudes. Government bodies and civic groups pushing multiculturalism and foreign tourism were blowing off the danger as racist rumor mongering, while journalists — by necessity socially critical — take a sympathetic view of foreigners and deny that any of the nonsense is going on.
... because it underscores the idea that not only is Lee not necessarily representative of the young ajŏshi, but even he believes that his xenophobic views stand contrary to government policy. The Feds are concerned about racism-mongering, they don't particularly mind Korean women hooking up with non-Korean men, etc.

I should add one other thing, and that is that this is not the first time I've heard such thoughts as those in Mr Lee's interview. Particularly in relation to the Nigerians and the Southeast Asians, I have a Gen X English coworker and a Baby Boomer American acquaintance who would frequently say the same things, if not worse.  Of course, that doesn't make what Mr Lee said okay; they were often quite racist themselves.

8 comments:

  1. What I found really galling is being called a loser by an unmarried 40-year-old.

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  2. So, all these Nigerians and Southwest Asians here in South Korea have overstayed their visas or are lacking them entirely?

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  3. John from Taejŏn, I think a lot of them are, although I am loath to speculate on what percent, as all I know about Nigerians in Korea is seeing some Nigerians loiter about in Yongsan (not unlike in Tsim Sha Tsui in Hong Kong). Seriously, there is one guy who was always standing on the side of the road in Haebangchon in the morning when I drove by from Seoul to my workplace in Kangnam, and he was there in the same place in the evening. In fact, it was his presence that prompted the aforementioned Englishman to rant about Nigerians in Korea and their propensity toward crime.

    But you know what? I have no idea what the Nigerians I don't see are doing in Korea. South Korea is one of Nigeria's largest trading partners, so why not expect that many or most of the Nigerians in Seoul are legit?

    Judging an entire group based on that one seemingly unpleasant fellow is not terribly unlike what Mr Lee does, or what loads of Orange County Register readers do in the comments section when anything remotely having to do with Mexicans pops up.

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  4. Robert wrote:
    What I found really galling is being called a loser by an unmarried 40-year-old.

    If that's the definition of loser, I'm getting dangerously close. But in my case, it's because I spent years engaged to or seriously involved with people I ultimately did not marry because of personality conflicts that eventually spun out of control or, in the latter case, it was with someone who ultimately wasn't terribly interested in getting married and definitely didn't want to have kids. Ever. And she (a White American) worried that if she married me she'd end up having to live the rest of life in Korea and she wasn't sure she wanted to do that, although she's the one still in Korea while I'm living in the US... ha ha).

    But in Mr Lee's case, it is possible that the lack of marriage thus far and his apparent disgust with people who engage in casual sex may stem from the same source: perhaps he is a latent homosexual who lashes out at these issues to avoid dealing with his own confused situation.

    I'm just throwing that out as a possibility. I've seen it before.

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  5. Oh, and Robert, since I'm guessing you're not Robert the Marmot, is there any way you could alter your userid so that it says something cool like, "The Anti-Marmot" or "Super Robert" or "Robert 2.0" or "English-teaching Robert" (a play on robot)?

    Just asking. :)

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  6. Oh, crap. I just realized you aren't the other Robert. My iPhone 4 lied to me yesterday.

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  7. BS... they are not looking for women... they are looking for fried chicken... J/K!!!!!

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  8. Bad. We here at Monster Island don't condone that kind of talk.

    But to take your comment a step further, maybe they told Mr Lee, "We come to Korea because we like the chick," and he grossly misunderstood.

    "When we find one that smells good, we can't wait to get our hands on it. We like to get our mouths all over it. We like to lick the juice off our fingers. We tell all our friends to come when we find a good one."

    And that's when Mr Lee said in his narrow little mind, "변태!"

    "Me, I like the thighs and the legs, but my friend like the breast."

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