Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Another foreign teacher cartoon... set in Haeundae!

Last weekend at the Marmot's Hole, this Korea Times article was linked to. Foreigners have been taking photos of women at the beach, and this is a no-no:
As the weather gets hotter, sex crimes at Haeundae Beach increase as well.

There have already been five suspects apprehended on charges of sex crimes this year at the beach. All of them had been taking pictures of certain parts of bikini-clad Korean girls.

If three to four full-body shots have been taken, there is a possibility of being released without punishment only if the targets of the pictures choose not to press charges and the photos are deleted.

However, if a girl feels she was being violated by focusing the picture on certain parts of her body, the perpetrator will face arrest and punishment. There have been five cases of foreigners taking unauthorized pictures of girls.

One police official stated, “Korean men usually don’t do anything that arouse suspicion, but foreign men have a tendency to satisfy their curiosity and take pictures. If you want to take pictures of a girl, ask her for her admission and even if you get the shot, posting it online is illegal.”
Brendan Carr pointed out the law this relates to and commented on it:
Art. 13, para. (1) of the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment, etc. (sic) of Sexual Crimes: If an image of another person's body causes "sexual stimulus or shame" and is taken "against the will" of the subject, the photographer may be imprisoned for up to five (5) years or fined up to W10 million.

Now it all makes sense. Having your picture taken by a dirty foreigner is shameful, while having your picture taken and published by, say, the Chosun Sports or a really handsome Korean guy is not. And having the dirty foreigner dragged before you by the police, having caught him in the act of taking your picture, and then being questioned by the police about whether or not you are ashamed that this dirty foreigner was enjoying looking at your tight young body, which by the way you shouldn't be flaunting like this, you dirty little whore, is also shameful. It's kind of like a self-licking ice cream cone for police.
Yesterday at the Marmot's Hole Robert posted on this and linked to this Munhwa Ilbo article, titled "'Foreigners [caught for] hidden cameras' increase sixfold over four years - concern videos may be leaked overseas," with a sub-headline reading "From 7 in 2008 to 43 in 2012, up to June this year 25 were caught."

The article opens by telling the story of how Haeundae police are seeking an arrest warrant for a 40-year-old Indonesian for taking 24 photos of 17 women in bikinis, and of how they booked without detention a Malaysian for taking 28 photos of the body parts of 13 women. It's then followed by this paragraph:
Hidden camera crimes by foreigners working as English instructors are occurring one after the other. In June the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office indicted without detention 'A', a 45-year-old American English instructor for secretly videoing the lower body parts of hundreds of women. A, who was working as an instructor at a well-known English hagwon in Korea, was charged with using his MP3 player's built-in camera to secretly take photos of the thighs and buttocks of 306 women wearing shorts.
I might suggest to reporter Kim Dae-jong that when you say that such crimes by foreign instructors are "occurring one after the other" ('잇따라 발생하고 있다'), you might want to provide more than one example. He is, of course, referring to this case from June; I can think of one other case from 2010 that made the news. My god, it just won't stop happening, will it? As well, the original Yonhap article about the June incident which he describes said that the foreign instructor took "306 videos of parts of the lower bodies of an unspecified number of women," not 306 women, but these are mere details, right?

Robert also posted the cartoon from the Munhwa Ilbo article:


Seeing as a Malaysian, Indonesian, and American were mentioned in the article, I think we can surmise where the evil-looking, blonde-haired foreigner above is supposed to be from, and what his job is. In fact, we don't have to surmise, we can look at this Munhwa Ilbo cartoon from May - by the same cartoonist - of an evil foreign teacher to see that it's the same guy:


You have to love the use of shadows in both of them. Can we, perhaps, expect a third to appear to round out a xenophobic triptych? We can always hope...

3 comments:

King Baeksu said...

The problem I have at Haeundae is that the local ladies always want to take pictures of me!

doctor boludo said...

왜 우리나라말로 보도하지 않아요?
왜 영어로만 (거의 다 영어로 99.9%)쓰인 기사를 올려요? 영어로 얘기하는 코쟁이들은 무슨 권력이 있죠?
이 억악/박해를 당 하는 대접을 더 효과적으로 하고 싶으면, 한국어로 하는 방법이 더 낫다고 생각해요.
글을 조금 읽어봤는데, 작가/기사의 사상은 '외국인' 불평든한 대접을 당 하는 나타내는 것인 것 같네요. 그런데, 영어로만 불평하거나 이 부정한 대접을 보여 주면, 대부분의 한국어원어민들은 읽지 않거나 그냥, '아, 바보멍청이 불쌍한 코쟁이 또 하나 외국어로 불평하는 거구나"라고 대답할 것 같아요. 나는 인종 백인, 영어원어민인데, 내 목표는 바보멍청이 외국인한테 한국에 와서 영어로만 얘기하는 게 절대 언어학적으로 나타나있는 정치권력을 한국어를 배우는 방법으로만 할 수 있다는 겁니다. 화이팅!

F5Waeg said...

that old guy with the cement between his ears?