Stuck in Korea

I'm a bit worried that I'm starting to fall out of love with Korea. It's been a Road to Damascus experience of sorts over the last week or so.

The whole thing began last Thursday night, where an evening of drinking was nicely rounded off by a random race attack from a drunk Korean guy. I spent the next few days wearing sunglasses - the school doesn't care too much about my appearance, but sporting a huge black eye was crossing the line. This got me a little pissed off as you might expect, and it was compounded by the fact that two days later some other random Korean guy tried to pick a fight with Matt.

All of a sudden I'm noticing things that I previously ignored, brushed off or just plain couldn't understand. The way some taxi drivers slow down to pick you up and then speed off again when they see that your a foreigner, or when they pick you up then drop you off halfway to your destination saying they've got an "appointment" (happened twice, although one time the guy did seem to be in a hurry to get somewhere), the way people try to barge in front of you in a line but never try it with Koreans (as if somehow you don't exist). It doesn't help that I understand Korean better than I did before. Now I hear what they say about us as soon as we enter a place. Sometimes they whisper, sometimes they talk out loud, assuming we don't understand a word they're saying. But I notice that more often than not they aren't exactly being complimentary. Oh, and God forbid you should talk to the women here. You could meet a table full of outwardly friendly Koreans in a bar and chat away and drink with them, but talk to any non-males and a lot of the time the whole group will be herded out the door before you've finished saying "annyeong haseyo". I exaggerate of course, but very rarely will a mixed group of Koreans hang around for longer than half an hour once you start talking to any ladies present.

I'm trying to understand where a lot of this all comes from. Maybe a couple of thousand years of invasion and oppression, polished off by being turned into a superpowers' playground has made people a little wary of outsiders. Also, English teachers have only really been here in force for 15 years or so. Before that, the only Westerners that Koreans met were predominantly American GI's - the worst representatives of Western culture that you can think of. By the time all us teachers arrived, I'm sure the Koreans had us all made out to be drunken, semi-literate thugs who when they aren't fighting or whoring are simply gang-raping 14 year old girls. It doesn't help that their antics are what gets onto the news in Korea. It reinforces a very negative stereotype. And that's a stereotype that the previous two generations have been raised on.

I get the feeling, especially out in the countryside as I am, that unless we stay quiet, smile politely, and try our best to blend into the background and not draw attention to ourselves then we automatically become "bad" foreigners, who should be ignored, slighted and avoided. And almost always all of these attitudes are hidden behind a smile.

I've had enough of it. I don't mean all Koreans by any measure - I have some awesome Korean friends that I think the world of. But all these Korean people who have a problem with foreigners need to think about who exactly they have a problem with and why. It's just not fair to tar us with the same brush just because we're Westerners. Yes, I know it's ironic - white British man realises he's on the receiving end of racism for the first time in his life and starts whinging, while people from ethnic minorities in the west have been putting up with this kind of shit all their life.

I hope this is just a little phase - I'd hate to think that this is me starting to tire of life here. I still love Sokcho and Korea, it's just that realising that there's an unpleasant side to life here (and also that even Korea has rednecks) has upset me.

Bloody yokels.