Extended thoughts from a sexpat in Korea (Responding to the Twitter trolls)

This past week was interesting due to the amount of outrage I received on Twitter. The content of this blog, and my Twitter feed, are usually pretty boring, so it was interesting to see just how many notifications a single tweet drew. It looks like it comes down to a certain demographic of Twitter users drew a lot of inference that just wasn't there. Based on their Twitter profiles, most are ardently far-left and pro-China, so they're obviously primed to see the entire world in a certain light. While blocking them all (I have zero desire to interact with people like that), I suddenly thought that it could be worthwhile and interesting to take a look at some of their comments and see if any are justified.

Spoiler alert: most of them aren't.

Fairly accurate representation of this blog's author 

The origin of the outrage: my flood tweet


Last week I tweeted a short video from the recent flooding in Seoul, which a coworker posted to our Kakao group chat. Yes, an actual Asian male, from Asia, posted it to an Asian male (except for me) group chat. I emphasize this because this detail will be meaningful later. In the video, a boy is struggling to catch a girl who is being swept down the street over and over in the rain. 

That could be a hard situation for anyone to deal with. But what made it funny to us was that it seemed like the main obstacle to him actually helping her wasn't the force of the water itself, but his awkward determination to hold his umbrella up over himself in the process. Instead of, you know, holding on to her in what could have been a life or death situation. Just drop the umbrella, kid. It's literally a storm of the century type situation. You're already knee deep in water anyway.  




I thought the meaning here was pretty clear. The joke was on the phenomenon of non-Korean women having an over-idealized, over-idolized, bordering on fetishized, view of Korean men. There's a tendency, probably due to the cultural soft power dominance of Korean media the past decade, to exaggerate just how romantic and strong (not to mention either chiseledly handsome, or flower-boy adorable), the average man here is. Well, here was a view from the other side. 


Idealizing Korean oppas


You're probably already familiar with a certain kind of obsessive stereotype. It's been variously parodied around the net with this type of copypasta:
annyeog!! ~ x3_^ I am a Korean kawaii! ~^ hehe :3 i reallllly sarang this Oppa but Oppa doesn't sarang me >< :-( i want to hold hands with Oppa and be his girl. Oppa is so kawaii, but Oppa sarang another unni :-( I really Sarang Oppa, what should I doooo? :3 >Ahh Oppa is so kawaii and I really love Oppa too much. Oppa Saranghae <3 ^ please help me, oppas and unnis, and alll dongsengs. I really want you to help me if you are my sunbae in sarang, because me is only a hoobae because this is my first sarang and I need lessons. kamnashiminda, Saranghae!! :3 ^

Rereading that, I thought of something that's probably above my pay grade to talk about. I'm no sociologist. But this style makes me think that, in a way, even the fact of Romanizing all of the Korean words hits on something: despite all the recommendations against using romanization for learning the language, international fans insist on it. Or ask directly for translations. Consider all the "unni, Eng sub plz" comments below livestream videos. The Korean language isn't a tool for facilitating honest, open communication with real Koreans at that point. It becomes a fetish product itself, just exotic enough to be exciting but not too familiar to be direct and boring. I get the feeling a lot of long-term expats also suffer from this; knowing just enough Korean to survive but not enough to really become a participant in the wider culture, maybe because of the weight of increased responsibility that comes with being an active participant. I absolutely noticed that, as my fluency improved, I myself was given less and less leeway in what I could avoid or get away with. Mistakes (in language and in actions) took on more weight, more was expected, etc. Maybe an over-reliance on Romanization acts in a similar way. Maybe that's hypocritical since I obviously Romanize plenty of Korean words in my posts. But I assume most readers of my blog have come here precisely because they don't know any Korean and therefore searched in English. 

But to get back on track, that obsession with fantasizing about a perfect oppa who will saranghae you so much better than your own local men isn't a healthy habit for any ethnicity. Guys here are just like guys anywhere. There are strong men and weak men. Good guys and bad guys. But letting K-dramas color your picture of what "all"™️ Koreans are like is just silly. 

Am I exaggerating about this? Is that copypasta simply a joke that doesn't actually happen in real life? 

Interestingly, in just the short week since I posted this, I began to notice it mentioned more. In fact CNN posted an interesting and lengthy article on it just days later, written by presumably Koreans themselves (based on their names), titled: 'The Netflix effect': Why Western women are heading to South Korea in search of love." 

Here are some relevant excerpts:
They considered Korean men cultured and romantic while complaining that men in their home countries often neglected their appearances and had one-track minds.
Grace Thornton, a 25-year-old gardener from the United Kingdom, traveled to Seoul in 2021 after watching K-drama "Crash Landing on You" on Netflix.
She was struck by how men in the show did not jeer at or catcall women on the street, as happens in her home country.
In her eyes, Korean men are "gentlemen, polite, charming, romantic, fairytale-like, chivalrous, respectful." She said it also helps that Korean men dress well and groom themselves.
"(English men in comparison) are half drunk, holding a beer, holding a dead fish," she said -- a reference to what she said was the prevalence of fishing pictures in British male dating app profiles.
And the appeal is not entirely about the men.
As Thornton puts it: "In England, I'm very common looking and sound the same as everyone else. In Korea, I'm different, exciting and foreign. People pay attention to me. I felt special."

That last line really hits on two different things going on that make a single, unified feeling. Not only is Korea a kind of fairytale land of chivalry and romance that is dead in their own country, but also they themselves, based essentially on their skin being a slightly different shade from Koreans or their eyes having two folds instead of one, become themselves some kind of elevated, fairly-tale princess too. 

Who wouldn't want to feel that way? I understand them in that regard. But that doesn't make it a healthy bias to have. As some come to understand:
Unfortunately, some women find after their arrival that the men they encounter are not as perfect as the ones portrayed on their screens.
Mina, a 20-year-old student from Morocco, said K-pop and Korean TV shows influenced her decision to come to the southern city of Busan in 2021.
The men she saw on TV were depicted as "respectful, good looking, rich men who are protective of you," she said.
But during her nights out, she was groped in a bar and propositioned for sex from strangers on the street. She felt some Korean men tended to believe that foreign women are more open to casual sex than local women.
"We are temporary pleasure," she said, adding, "Men are men, humans are alike everywhere."
 -- 'The Netflix effect': Why Western women are heading to South Korea in search of love

Surely not every foreign woman will end up feeling this way. If you actually live in Korea, you will have to have noticed the uptick over the past decade of Korean male, foreign female marriages, and I'm not talking about imported brides arranged through brokers for otherwise undesirable Korean men. These are foreign women from both the West and from other Asian nations who have chosen freely to come to live in South Korea, for the lifestyle, the culture, and yes, the men. There are many successful families with this makeup. More power to them. They are pretty popular too, especially when they open YouTube channels highlighting their marriage and daily lives [see: 3 YouTube Vloggers show glimpse into biracial marriage life]. Obviously we're not talking about them. They seem to have generally healthy, well adjusted ideals and know intimately about what real life as a foreign in Korea is like. They're not the "oppa I saranghae uwu" fanclub types. They're the "여보, 너 정말 사랑해요" types. They know reality because they're in reality. No over-idealizations, no cultural fetishizations. Nor are they "you Russia?" or "백마". They have a place here beside their Korean husbands and experience it all, the good and the bad. Clearly, the jokes on over-idolozation are not on them. 

Interestingly, Korean netizens are aware of this exact CNN article, and their own comments are entirely in line with these thoughts:
1. [+203, -6] A drama is just a drama... and even if a man from a drama were to exist in real life,  he would never be your man ^^
2. [+154, -3] Why come all the way to Korea just to hang out at bars and night clubs and expecting to meet men from the dramas? You could go to any club in your own country and be met with the same type of trashy men anywhere in the world. If you want to meet decent people, go to decent venues.
3. [+75, -11] There's really not much to it. These women are nothing special in their own countries so they come to our country thinking we're a first world country and the men in our dramas seem like kind people. They probably think they can seduce a Korean man more easily.
4. [+75, -33] Hurry on over... Chuseok is coming up and your future in-laws are going to need a woman to cook 'jeon', do the dishes, and give them money
5. [+26, -1] I wish they'd realize that the man may be Hyun Bin but his partner is also Son Ye Jin

Even aside from CNN, again just this week, I came across a tweet from a local foreign journalist who has embedded himself pretty deep in Korean society, even publishing his own Korean-language book (a feat I couldn't do) looking at some of the difficult sides of Korean life. Like most of the Twitter mob that went after me, he himself is pretty left-wing and non-white himself. But even he has noticed this phenomenon:


I've encountered people like Grace before, who fantasise and romanticise about Korean "oppas" in sparkling Korea, only to be rudely awoken once they land here.
Like every country, there's the good, the bad, and the ugly. Not just "beautiful".

I would think all of this goes without saying at this point, and isn't an idea possessed only by right-wing colonialist types. Dramas are dramatic. Idols are designed to be idolized. The normal man-on-the-street isn't going to be those types. Sure, if you were struggling in a rainstorm, you might hope Lee Byung-hun would be there, in his Terminator or Eugene Choi avatar, to rescue you. But is a guy like that in your league?  Do you think the average male is like that? 

Two Asian men. Which one can you get?  

I'm actually being too hard on our everyman here in the video, whoever he is. Because I doubt even an A-list star, even your ideal oppa, could handle this situation well. It's not really his fault. It's not everyday your friend gets swept away in a massive storm. He's probably trying his best. 

Or is he? He's just a young guy, and awkward, and not sure what to do. We could all be in that sort of situation. But geez kid, put down the umbrella and grab your friend. Run, don't walk, after her. Throw the umbrella down. You can get another. I can see the bags he is carrying are making it hard for him. One of those is probably her bag. Nice kid. Romantic in its own youthful way. But come on, this is real life danger. 

In that way, there were really two things I found amusing in the video that feed into each other. The first was the outside perspective I was bringing in, of the unrealistic expectations of non-Korean girls. The second is just how awkward the kid in the video is. Maybe that makes me laugh because... that is what real life is like. That's exactly what would happen in a real life situation. It was a real life situation. It really did happen. 

This all reminds me of the contrast between Hyun Bin as a North Korean soldier, and what a real one would be like. The contrast is what makes it amusing. Sure, within the suspended disbelief world of the drama, it makes complete sense that a NK soldier could be like that. But a drama isn't reality. So we end up with high expectation versus the average reality, and the clash of dissonance that results in when someone arrives wearing Rose-tinted (Blackpink-tinted?) glasses.       

Which North Korean soldier would you like to "crash land" into?

This idea is what (I thought) my tweet was lampooning. This strange idea that Korean men, by the very act of being Korean men, are imminently superior. 

My view of Korean men


This seems to have led most of the Twitter mob to believe that my purpose was to disparage Korean men in general. Rather than attacking the objectification and idolization of men, they thought I was attacking all Korean men themselves. And with me being a white guy, this exploded into me being racist and elevating my own heaving macho white maleness (boy if those people could see me in real life...) above some kind of frail Asian masculinity.

That interpretation was the source of most of the vitriol directed at me. Somehow a professional crowd of 삐돌이 and 삐순이 came across the tweet and went wild with direct racist connotations. Which I find a little amusing, considering I spend 90% of my life with... Asian men. Most of my daily conversations are with... Asian men. I spend the majority of each day with the same 5-6 bunch of guys, day in, day out. We are nearly 불알친구 at this point. 

Of course even if my intention to make light of the "oppa saranghae!" crowd was the point, that doesn't necessarily mean the comment couldn't come across, to some who are already primed to look for it, as some kind of dig at Asian men. 

But they're fishing for an ideology and entitled superiority that just isn't there. That doesn't mean what they're fishing for doesn't exist. Racism against Asians and a culture of belittling Asian masculinity surely does exist. But if they're going after me for it, they're really barking up the wrong tree. I spend 90% of my life in the company of people who look like this:

The type of hyungs I roll with. Image: 축산경제신문

And bear in mind, it was from a group of guys like this that I received the video in question. I assume if they suspected me of harboring some deep seated sense of superiority, or if they felt I was a white parasite using my whiteness to coast by while reaping some kind on non nonexistent awards, they'd probably just fire me. 
 
So now let's take a look at what some of the choicest comments had to say. I won't directly link to these tweets. I don't think this content needs to be linked to. You can go find them yourself if you really want. Some have now been deleted but all of these are 100% genuine tweets I received. 

I'll divide them into a few basic themes and try to briefly comment on them.

I'm just a yellow-fever sexpat 

Boy, I only wish this one were true. I feel like that scene with Milton from Office Space when I hear this kind of criticism:


A lot of comments felt that I was belittling Asian men in general because I am a "sexpat" (nice word coinage, to be honest). 

Now I can't deny that this type of man exists. [See, for one of many examples: American Vlogger Makes Hidden Camera Video About How Easy It Is To Pick Up Korean Women - Koreaboo]. But it's certainly been the case for me that I've not benefited from this supposed advantage. 

I came to Korea not as a young college-age exchange student, eager to pick up the ladies. I doubt I have the physical body proportions for that anyway. Or the money. I do my work, I stop at McDonalds, maybe I'll go out for a beer or five with the boys, and I go home. Sometimes if I can handle it I go take a hike up my local mountain and commune with all the other aging men desperate to hold on to some physical ability.

If other, younger white men are enjoying the attention of world class gorgeous Korean women out at nightclubs or bars, cruising the streets of Hongdae or Gangnam, that's their business. Not many local "native" women are throwing themselves at the moderately overweight white guy sitting at a flimsy plastic table with 2 other moderately overweight Korean guys at a pocha in Uiwang on a Thursday night, all of them constantly "그거 아닌데..."ing each other. I sure wish they were. But if the mob is accusing me of being that kind of guy or having the sexpat kind of life, again, they're barking up the wrong tree. 

Anyway, here are a few in that category I found funny.


This was was actually in response to a tweet about a large amount of cockroaches escaping the sewers following the flood. What exactly is a "sexpat chill session"? Where do I sign up? 


I'm confused by this one. What is a YT boy? YouTube boy? Young teen? Yankee Time? And what exactly are Asian women enabling me to do? 


I'm not sure I ever implied a dig at local men at all, as I think I've made clear by now. Are women back home ignoring me for local men instead? I'm not sure. I have seen a few "AMWF" couples, as I mentioned already. I don't consider them as having ignored me to go date a Korean man instead. If they're here to begin with, then it's a pretty good sign they already have an affinity for Korean men. Am I supposed to feel rage or guilt about this? I'm sorry, but I don't. I don't really give a shit. Am I some deputized representative of the white race and need to be expected to protect my own women from the grips of Oppa™️? That kind of protectionist racism sounds a lot like... well, what Asian men are often accused of doing. 

I do agree with his second premise though. I too hope to someday move back home without any shame or embarrassment. So far so good. I'm proud of my admittedly simple life here. I get to help out a family friend's business, I get to have good times and good beers with good guys, and I'm even saving up a bit of dough. That idea brings me to the next tweet:

Immigrant or expat? 



No, I don't. I'm not an immigrant. I'm an expat. 

This too seems like a way bigger issue. It seems like there is a controversial debate around an idea that white people are somehow privileged to be "expats" while non-white are labelled "immigrant" as if these words themselves have inherent racist connotations. But I think it's a pretty cut and dry distinction. Here it is, for me anyway:
  • immigrant - someone who moves to a different country, with the intention of becoming a part of that new country's culture, society, and economy.
  • expat - someone who moves to a different country, without those intentions and without roots that will outlive him there
So for example, there are many immigrants to Korea, both white and non-white. They've come to live here long term. They learn Korean to at least a conversational level. They are here for life. They marry a Korean. They have kids here. They own and drive cars here. They have long term jobs with Korean companies that don't need to sponsor their visas. They vote in local elections. They fret over the kids' hagwon fees and grades. They eat rice at breakfast. 

There are also many expats here. They interact mostly with other expats. They are on sponsored visas at their company or hagwon. They use the English language hotlines and apps for Korean services. Their home bank account is their main banking tool. They are here for fun. They have few to little connections with their local community. They maintain some degree of distance/isolation from wider society. They don't vote in elections or especially know what's being voted on. Maybe most importantly: they will, at some point, go back home, because there is no family here to maintain them. 

Not perfect definitions by any means, but workable. You may be surprised that I still consider myself an expat. There are many facets of Korean life I do not deal with. In a sense I'm more embedded than most, but in another sense, I'll never consider myself "Korean" at all. Korea is for the Koreans. That's actually one reason I still don't vote here. Part of me feels like I shouldn't. Now you can debate me about that with valid points, but it's just how I feel. I personally would feel wrong to call myself an immigrant. Not because it would demean me, but because it feels like I would then be entitling myself to more than I deserve. I haven't put in a lot of the boots on the ground type work that deserves that title. Now maybe someday I will, and then make the transition from expat to immigrant. It's certainly possible. I've seen it happen, sometimes to guys who didn't even mean to let it happen. Life is funny in that way. 

But no, I don't consider myself an immigrant. A real immigrant puts down roots. I'm, for now, still more or less rootless here. I often think like this: would a Korean consider me Korean? Sometimes they joke that I am, but there's always a bit of tongue in cheek there. They know I'm not. They know I can't ever really be. A lot of true immigrants deal with that too, but it's getting better. 

That's also a double edged sword for the teasing type of argument in that tweet. How can I call myself an immigrant, if the country I'm in would never honestly call me that?  

To recap: I would love to be a sexpat. It would imply I'm getting a lot of easy sex just for being white. Again, where is all this easy sex I was promised? 

By the way, I'm certainly not immune to self-deprecation. I posted this tweet earlier this year, amused at the conflation between "white man" and "unemployed loser." The Twitter mob will surely be able to run something with this.

백수인생 = white man? Image from my Twitter


Missing the point

Another category of angry tweets were what I'd call "missing the point" tweets. A lot of these folk thought I was making light of the deaths involved in this flood. Now they are correct that some people did die in this shocking flood, a couple of whom were indeed swept away. So I can understand their view that it would be cruel and tasteless to joke about people who died in this flood.

But the people in this tweeted video did not die. I'm not sure how I can be making fun of death towards people who are still alive. 

Again, the target of my joke was the idealized oppa fantasy. Yet some could only interpret it as a "haha people are dying!" joke:


This kind of argument makes sense to me if I posted a link to an article about deceased victims of the flood with the original caption. But I didn't. I think these people are reading too much into it. No one is laughing at people's deaths. I'm laughing at the awkwardness of preferring one's umbrella to one's partner, and a certain blindness to the fact that that awkwardness is a real life foil to the dramatized ideal. I think we all agree that human death is not a funny subject. Which is why I didn't post anything comical about any of the deaths. 

That being said, I do still see the person's point, which I'll talk about below.


Again, I'm not sure how being a low-ranked employee in a Korean-owned enterprise gives me colonizer status. I probably am a bit of a SoB sometimes though. 


Not sure what this has to do with K-pop exactly. I'm guessing they mean that K-pop has contributed to the idolization of Korean men, which is supposed to make me jealous and insecure. I mean he's right, I do wish K-pop didn't exist, but not for the reason he thinks 😉. Just kidding. I actually do enjoy some K-pop, though I can't claim to be up to date with it. I'm still listening to 손담비.

My biggest reason for liking K-pop has been its effect on the Korean economy, and since my job deals with a lot of import/export, it must in some way indirectly contribute to us staying afloat and therefore me staying employed. So the more album copies foreign women purchase, the better. 


Wow, now this is a big one. 

Again, the person is partly right. I do dislike China and the DPRK. Though not for the reasons they think. I'm not sure how I can be effectively racist against Asian men when my livelihood depends on them. Perhaps she thinks I just secretly harbor those sentiments and use Twitter to release them. But what I really don't understand is how white western men are apparently simultaneously "sexpat parasites" and "virgin incels." Surely it's one or the other. I don't see how this person can feel I am bathing in a never ending stream of easy Asian female sex conquests, while at the same time being a failure, no-sex loser that no Asian female would touch with a 10리 pole. And as if to further the illogic of this comment, to then imply the tweet is being liked by "all the other failed sexpat parasites"? Did she look at the Likes? That tweet has currently 8 likes. Her own has, at time of this screenshot, around 20. I'm not sure those 8 people are all white western expats either. Feels a lot like this person has a chip on their shoulder and is out looking for fresh targets. 

A lot of exaggeration and name calling, but really barking up the wrong tree. 

There were also a few funny attempts at plain old racism:


Oh, I just now got the "KKK" meaning embedded in there. Thought ht was just holding down the key for dramatic effect.

Am I supposed to be offended by the term "cracker"? Points for effort I guess. It reminds me of the term "Yankee." Some actually tweeted to me "Yankee go home." I'm really curious if any American has ever been even remotely offended by being called a Yankee. I can't think of a single term one could use towards me that would get my blood boiling. Maybe that's part of my white privilege. The ability to not give a shit. No more "white" trait than that maybe. 

Actually funny

Some of the response tweets were actually and genuinely funny.


You have to admit, that's funny. And even more so because others tried to make a sexual joke out of "10 won tips" but most landed flat. This person managed to stick the landing with a genuinely funny tweet. Ironically the most simple form of the joke was the funniest.


Ouch. Not only going for the penis, but hitting me where it hurts with a Trump style insult: your website is dogshit and failing." Ouch. He's right. Although in some sense, this blog has never really succeeded in the first place. I'd love to imagine a day when money from this blog is just pouring in, and I can quit my job and blog about Korea all day long and get paid for it. But I don't see that happening any time soon. 

For those keeping score at home, this blog earns me around $5-10 per month. If a post happens to make the rounds, like my air conditioning post in summer months, it can reach $10/month for about two months. Usually it's $5-6 range. Hardly enough for a cup of coffee these days, but somehow even the idea of earning a few dollars from this gives me the motivation to keep it up. Which I hope is helpful for others. The biggest reason I started this was to offer helpful suggestions to others, because I know how much I depend on blogs, usually Naver blogs, for my own life here. 


This one I loved. If you really think I'm disparaging Asian masculinity as weak, then reply with some handsome and swoll Asian studs! That's not sarcasm by the way. I really mean that. Assuming I really was making fun of Asian men in general, the best defense would be to showcase the realities of strong Asian men, not have a bunch of Twitter trolls, many of whom are women, trying to defend against it. 

I can promise you ladies, whatever your ethnicity or tastes may be, I do not look remotely like these K-Oppas whatsoever. I'm more like 조세호, before he lost weight. So if you find yourselves more attracted to these guys than me, be my guest. Hell I'm starting to feel a little tingle looking at them too. 

Threats of cancellation 

So far these have been mostly funny, but there's also the vindictive issue of personal, non-Twitter attacks that seemed borderline psychopathic to me and inappropriate, not to mention impotent. 

These relate to a reader who happened to comment a non-racist, non-enflamed response to my tweet:


Exactly. At least one person understood why I thought the video clip was amusing. Obviously he's being sarcastic, but we get it. Drop the umbrella, already. I didn't see anything racist or masclinist in this tweet response. Just an observation that the kid seems more concerned about keeping his head dry than surviving a flood. This Twitter replier, who is a total stranger to me and not in fact part of my secret brotherhood of white men fellow backscratchers, has since deleted that tweet after being targeted for it. 

Interestingly, he made that comment not long after posting his own version, again of people struggling through a flood yet somehow completely focused on their umbrella usage:


Are he and I somehow racially/culturally biased? Is there some inherent dependence on umbrellas that he and I, as white men, don't understand? Is it our white privilege to not need umbrellas in floods? Of course, I would make fun of anyone, white or black or anything else, for over-reliance on an umbrella during a flood, particularly when you're already waist deep in floodwaters. Our "bias" would come from the fact that we watch Korean news, because we live in Korea, and most of our commentary will be on... Koreans. If the mob would like me to have more equity in my sarcastic quips, maybe I should also tease non-Asians for this.

Here's the Daily Mirror doing just that. Look at this British idiot:

"Most optimistic umbrella." Image: Daily Mirror

And, uh oh, better sit down for this one. Here is NPR, hardly what we can call a right-wing source, making fun of... uh oh... an Asian male, for holding an umbrella in a flood.

"The Incredibly Unnecessary Umbrella" (actual title). Image: NPR

The point being, I don't think anything James said could be seriously construed as racist. But that didn't stop the mob from accusing him too and even threatening to try to get him fired from his job.





There were also a few tweets belittling him for being a white male professor in Korea, as if that fact alone proves he harbors racist feelings and benefits from privilege. I can't find them now; maybe they were deleted. I suppose those same users would also feel the same about having an actual Chinese person hired by an American university to teach Chinese conversation classes? Or a Thai teaching Thai? Weird to me that people would need to feel so angry about a native English speaker being brought into teach English. 

Obviously, I think there's a lot going on there. A few pan-Asian anti-white racists (I'm not making that stuff up, check their Twitter bios) don't represent an entire community of course. But it does show how vicious these kind of folks can be. 

What do you think? Is James a colonialist and racist? Was his comment wildly inappropriate? Does he deserve to be fired for it? 

Luckily for him, I highly doubt anyone in his university's administration will give a shit. These mob types often live in America, where people actually care about what a non-politician says on Twitter. I'm sure if they did contact his school, whoever answers the phone will have no idea who James is, or give a shit. I am absolutely sure that my own boss wouldn't care. He'd be angry that someone bothered him with this type of trivial bullshit. I could tweet out "white is right, Heil Hitler" and he wouldn't care. Hell he's so "based" that I could tweet out something about Dokdo belonging to Japan and his response would probably be "What the hell are you doing tweeting right now! Aiego, no, what is this? Lot to do and he's talking to me about Twitter, chugh..."

Legitimate criticism


Finally, there were a few comments that actually did make me stop and think about what I posted. None of the vitriolic ones. But the simple ones like this:


At the time of my original tweet, nobody had yet been reported killed, at least in any news that I'd seen. But even still, many commenters had a point. Even if the video was amusing to watch, even if teasing the "oppa saranghae" crowd seemed funny, the timing was not funny. Reading these type of comments, I started to think twice about it. 

It probably wasn't a good idea to share that outside that original Kakao chat room. That same room, by the way, ended up filled with articles and videos of the flood as it got worse and we all worried about people and families. 

Maybe I should just delete the tweet. But at this point, with all the responses it received, I won't. I'll leave it up at least to maintain the reference to all those comments. Though I will consider more carefully about what I post on this feed. I hate Twitter, and this feed was supposed to be just plain old links to my blog posts. Over time I've added more and more outside links and funny pictures. Maybe I should stick to the basics more. 

By the way, the Seoul government will now install manhole safety nets so people flooded down the street like this won't get pulled down inside the sewers. Good example of the positives of the 빨리빨리 culture where things get done. You don't often see that kind of quick, functional action in many western countries. 

Final thoughts

Like I've said, I think these people are really barking up the wrong tree. I actually agree with some of what they say. They are talking about real issues. I just don't see that tweet as being a part of the narrative they're pushing. Maybe it is. Who knows. Obviously I think I'm an OK guy. I get the feeling my coworkers do too. But people are entitled to their opinions. I blocked most of the tweet repliers, but of course they're still up for anyone else to see. And now memorialized here in this post too. 

If anyone actually read this far, I hope this gives some indication of what kind of guy I am. I wouldn't still be in Korea if I didn't love it here, and that has nothing to do with women or empowerment. I also enjoy writing in this blog from time to time and sharing pieces of Korea with a mostly foreign audience including on Twitter. Sometimes people like what I share, sometimes they don't. I just hope some people find most of what I post useful or entertaining. 

Thanks for reading.

Tagged:

Comments

Post a Comment