The headline for the article states that 55% of Korean men link sexual assault with women’s behavior. This is sure to get some people upset who believe nothing a woman does should cause them to be a victim of sexual assault:
More than half of South Korean men believe that sexual violence can diminish if women are more cautious about their conduct, a government survey showed Monday, revealing that society’s stigma towards sexual assault victims remains high.
In a sexual violence survey by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family on 7,200 adults aged 16 to 64 conducted from September to December last year, 55 percent of men answered “sexual violence can be reduced if women are careful.” The same response among women stood at 42 percent.
Among men, 54.5 percent thought “excessively revealing fashion” was a cause of sexual violence, while 56.9 percent believed that if a woman is raped while taking a ride offered by a stranger, they themselves are partly responsible as well.
Also, 42.5 percent of male respondents believed that if a woman goes to a man’s home after their first encounter, she is consenting to sex, while 8.7 percent even replied that some women “enjoy being raped.”
Meanwhile, 30.7 percent of women believed that “men cannot control themselves when they are sexually aroused,” while 22 percent of men agreed with the response. [Yonhap]
I saw this question posted on to Reddit and figure I would comment on it:
I’m wondering why the foreigners who re-sign year after year until they’re past the 5+ years in Korea mark and don’t learn Korean stay in Korea? If you, after more than five years in a country you are choosing to live in, can’t have a conversation in Korean, isn’t that racist/Eurocentric? What reason would you have for not bothering to learn your host country’s language? The Bangladeshi worked in the factory has learned it, why haven’t you?
I get the “I thought I’d just be here for a year but then I re-signed,” I really do, but after five, six, seven years you’re a long-termer. [Reddit]
I don’t think it is racist to not become proficient in Korean. From the US military perspective I knew servicemembers who had many years of service in Korea and could not speak Korean. A lot of it has to do with working in an English work environment plus Korea is so English friendly as well especially around US military bases that knowing Korean is not mandatory. Getting fluent in Korean takes a lot of time and work that most people don’t have. However, many folks who have served many years in Korea do know enough Korean to get around and communicate simple things.
Members of conservative groups take part in a rally in areas around Seoul City Hall on Feb. 25, 2017, the fourth anniversary of President Park Geun-hye’s inauguration, to urge the Constitutional Court to dismiss the impeachment. Park was impeached in December over a massive corruption scandal centered on her close friend Choi Soon-sil. The court is expected to determine whether to approve the impeachment or not next month. (Yonhap)
Here is yet another example of someone in Korea doing something wacky to show their displeasure with something:
A 79-year-old man, identified only by his last name Lee, lies down on the floor after stabbing himself in the abdomen with a weapon in front of Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon (L) at the city hall on Feb. 24, 2017. (Yonhap)
An elderly man unsatisfied with the capital city’s development policy stabbed himself while Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon was delivering a congratulatory speech at an opening of an exhibition at the city hall Friday, municipal officials and witnesses said.
The 79-year old man, identified only by his last name Lee, approached Mayor Park with a weapon at around 10 a.m. and stabbed himself in the abdomen, after shouting “Can you say you are a mayor?” and “I need to die,” according to the witnesses. He was drunk when the incident took place.
Lee was rushed to a nearby hospital and is in stable condition.
He reportedly had conflicts with a district office after the city government decided not to carry out a development project. The amount of compensation suggested by the district office fell short of what was asked by a development committee headed by Lee. [Yonhap]
This is the nearly empty infant unit of a hospital in Seoul on Feb. 22, 2017, when Statistics Korea announced that the number of babies born in 2016 reached 406,300, the lowest since 1970 when the statistics agency started to compile such data. (Yonhap)
I hope the Korean consulate and advocacy groups are recommending to the illegal immigrants calling them to go back to Korea instead of remaining as criminals in the US:
Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs take an undocumented immigrant to a patrol car in Los Angeles on Feb, 7, 2017, in this photo released by The Associated Press. (Yonhap)
Park Sang-ok, a consul responsible for immigration affairs at the South Korean Consulate General in Los Angeles, was inundated with telephone calls all day long on Friday.
Many Koreans who are not legally in the United States called him for inquiries, as they were becoming aware that the anti-immigration polices of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration were imminent and are scared of possibly being deported.
According to Park, the callers, including one from Boston, Massachusetts, were responding to the consulate general’s posting of a notice about the U.S. administration’s measures to toughen immigration polices and related information.
Advocacy groups supporting the rights of Korean immigrants, such as the Los Angeles-based Korean Resource Center (KRC), have been dealing with an increasing number of callers seeking more information about the administration’s campaign to crack down on illegal immigration. The center, founded in 1983, was created to educate, serve and organize the Korean-American community in Los Angeles.
One of the officials at the KRC, Chung Sang-hyuk, said, “We received an average of 20 calls a day last week. There were calls from Ohio State and New York as well as Los Angeles.”
The Korean-American community has been gripped by fear since the Trump administration on Tuesday announced new guidelines that could lead to more aggressive deportations of undocumented immigrants inside the country and at the border. [Yonhap]
The new immigration policy deports illegal immigrants arrested for crimes. Such as this guy here quoted in the article:
A Korean-American in his 20s living in Georgia State said to Yonhap News Agency, “I have been fined for drunk driving in the past and my visa has expired. I am so worried about agents coming after me.”
If an illegal immigrant is driving around drunk, putting people at risk, why should American citizens be expected to let this person stay?
Here is the other effect from President Trump’s new immigration policy, it is forcing people to apply for residency and citizenship:
Against the backdrop, lawyers specializing in immigration law are cashing in on many Koreans’ needs to obtain permanent residence rights and citizenships earlier.
A 49-year-old Korean resident near Los Angeles said on the condition of anonymity that he hurriedly applied for citizenship right after President Trump’s inauguration. “But it remains to be seen whether I will get it in due time,” he said.
I have little sympathy for illegal immigrants that have had years to apply for residency and did not do it.
It looks like the Korean political left is slowing coming around the the realization that the deployment of a THAAD missile defense battery to South Korea is in the security interest of the ROK:
Ahn Cheol-soo
The second largest opposition People’s Party is in a heated debate over whether to drop its opposition to the planned deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery on South Korean soil.
The party adopted its official stance against THAAD in July last year soon after Seoul and Washington announced their decision to deploy the system this year to better deter nuclear and missile threats from North Korea. At the time, the party cited the negative impact on Seoul-Beijing relations and strong protest from local residents over concerns about detrimental health and environmental effects.
The move to change such a stance comes as some members, including former co-chair and leading presidential hopeful Ahn Cheol-soo said the situation has changed. They cited the North’s latest missile launch, which showed significant progress in its missile technology, as well as the apparent assassination of Kim Jong-nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, in Malaysia last week.
“South Korea and the United States have already concluded an agreement on the deployment,” Ahn said. [Korea Times]
This Korean family is lucky their child did not drown:
A family visiting Hawaii from South Korea is grateful for the good Samaritans who helped rescue their young son from waters on Oahu’s North Shore.
Cell phone video taken Sunday just after 5:30 p.m. shows 8-year-old Ryon Kim playing in the whitewash near shore at Sunset Beach. His younger brother plays nearby. Their grandfather can be seen gesturing to Ryon, though he does not appear to realize the danger the boy is in.
Ryon attempts to leave the water, but a retreating wave knocks him over and sucks him out into the ocean. His grandfather and mother struggle to reach him and that’s when several people can be seen running in to help, including Ewa Beach native Christopher Tuncap.
“The minute I saw the second wave come, that’s when I got up and I started sprinting,” said Tuncap. [Hawaii News Now]
You can read the rest at the link plus view the cell phone video, but Oahu’s North Shore is infamous for its large waves during the winter months and is not an area for little kids to be splashing around in.
It does seem pretty weird that the pro-Park protesters are waving US and Israelis flags which have absolutely nothing to do with the corruption scandal that caused her impeachment:
Controversy is brewing over the use of U.S. and Israeli flags by supporters of the impeached President Park Geun-hye during their weekend rallies that have nothing to do with the countries.
Right-wing groups have organized these rallies to counter much-larger demonstrations demanding Park’s removal from power by the Constitutional Court.
Pro-Park counterprotesters have waved the Korean national flag, or Taegeukgi, at the rallies, which they call “Taegeukgi rallies” themselves. Lately, they have also been bringing U.S. and Israeli flags to the political events.
The participants claim it is a way to show their “patriotism,” but criticism is prevalent that the flags are being misused.
Several protesters, who are mainly in their 60s or older, have been waving the Korean and U.S. flags together in a bid to underscore the Korea-U.S. security alliance against “North Korean sympathizers.”
Some others, who call themselves devout churchgoers, have brought the Israeli flag with a wooden cross and other symbols they think can represent their faith.
But critics said Monday that such expressions may only stir up misunderstandings toward the U.S and Israel as well as Christianity.
The U.S. and Israeli embassies in Seoul were not available for comment. [Korea Times]
