The Indian Professor who charged a Korean man for racial discrimination is on his way to getting a jugdement in his case. A drunk Korean man started abusing him on the bus, and rather than walk away, or just take it, he took the man to court.
This would be the first ruling in Korean courts that charges a Korean for discriminating against a non-Korean in Korea.
Last line of the article: “Amid such controversies, Rep. Jun Byung-hun of the main opposition Democratic Party yesterday presented his plan to submit a bill on an anti-racism law.”
An anti-racism law would be interesting; I’m told by Benjamin Wagner that, while Korea’s party to a number of international anti-discrimination treaties and such, one of the big jobs Korea has in its near future is to come up with a clear, legal definition of terms like racism and discrimination, to be used in Korean courts.
As they define those terms, in the same way every evil overlord should have a six-year old advisor to stick around and ask obvious questions nobody else thought to ask, I hope there’s someone in the room who asks the question, after every clause written, “If this rule were made law in the countries with a large Korean immigrant population, and this rule were applied to my cousin/uncle/brother-in-law, would we think it’s cool/adequate/comprehensive enough?”
07/09/2009 at 12:25 pm Permalink
I wonder how an anti racism bill would work. It would have to go beyond making the rejection of service illegal, and open discrimination illegal, but would also have to include educational programs that attempt to recast Korea as a diverse society rather than a monolithic culture. That is, to make education programs that see the products of intermarried couples as more than Koreans, and embrace the not Korean culture as part of a new Korean social fabric that works to strengthen the country. Getting this message into the heads of young Koreans will be difficult, but within a few generations there will more children from mixed families that the average Korean person will have to deal with, and while Korea might seem discriminatory now, just wait until the country actually does become more multi-ethnic, and people start to fear the tainting of pure Korean blood.
07/09/2009 at 12:27 pm Permalink
Sorry that sentence should read like this:
That is, to make education programs that see the products of intermarried couples as more than Koreans, and embrace the not only Korean culture, but also the immigrant culture as part of a new Korean social fabric that works to strengthen the country.
07/09/2009 at 1:13 pm Permalink
I’d hoped that the first Korean legal case on racial discrimination would be for something more serious than name calling. You know, like denying someone a job. In such a case the plaintiff would be able to demonstrate actual harm rather than emotional distress. While few people like to be called names, if verbal taunting merited a lawsuit then my elementary school chums and I with would all be deeply in debt. I’m no apologist for racism but I hope the court finds in favor of the defendant or, better yet, that the case is thrown out. Korea’s libel and slander laws are already screwy enough. I don’t want them to be beefed up to the point where I can be sued for calling someone mean names on the bus while drunk.
Also, anti-discrimination laws are fine. They ensure equal treatment in access to housing, schools, jobs and government services. Anit-racism laws, however, dictate how people can think. I am never in favor of legal measures against those with unpopular or even blatantly wrong ideas. The law should focus on actions, not on beliefs.
07/09/2009 at 3:57 pm Permalink
For having my hackles raised in a previous thread re: attitudes towards foreign teachers, I actually think these sorts of laws are terrible and misguided. In Europe you can do hard time for spouting anti-Semitic babble, and it’s a self-defeating way of trying to combat ignorance.
Let ideas and speech stand or fall on their own merit, even if it means you have to put up with hearing ideas or speech that make you uncomfortable.
“I’d hoped that the first Korean legal case on racial discrimination would be for something more serious than name calling. You know, like denying someone a job.”
I totally agree. Discriminatory hiring practices take money from your pocket and hurt you directly. Somebody calling you a racist slur? IMO it’s a slippery slope towards persecuting anyone with an unpopular point of view. The American legal view re: 1st Amendment rights is a much more enlightened approach than the “Thoughtcrime” view.
07/09/2009 at 4:29 pm Permalink
Some of it depends on what exactly occurred and what the legal meaning of “contempt” is . . . I suspect (on the basis of exactly zero legal training ~ care to weigh in, Mr. Ben Wagner, esq?) that it is more like harrassment, wherein someone is subject to persistent and unwelcome attention based on some characteristic such as race, gender, etc. And while I think most of us would be tempted to write off some drunken dude on the subway calling us dirty and smelly and generally being an arse, it was apparently threatening enough for the police to get involved and to bring an indictment.
07/09/2009 at 5:21 pm Permalink
I agree that a racial discrimination law for name calling is uncalled for, but in this situation, the Korean guy was getting all up in the Indian guy’s face, seemingly trying to pick a fight. I think that a case for assault, or verbal assault could be made if the Indian guy felt threatened.
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2009/08/04/indian-professor-presses-charges-against-korean-after-racial-incident/
07/09/2009 at 7:06 pm Permalink
What if this has reversal effects? Say a foreigner saying racist slander against a Korean.
There was a clause in my contract that said something to the effect of respecting each others cultures. Sometimes I want to print this out big and plaster it around my coteachers desk. A reminder to their decision to put me in a room with no window.
08/09/2009 at 4:15 am Permalink
I like what ecorn had to say.
08/09/2009 at 8:44 pm Permalink
Wow, Joy, you’re never going to move on with life after that window episode, are you? Maybe they should have “respected you culture” better and expected you to find your own housing, as most employers do in the United States …
Are you worried about foreigners being taken to court for saying racist things about Koreans? The way you worded the opening to your comment makes me wonder if you consider this a bad thing.
09/09/2009 at 11:21 am Permalink
c’mon samdi, be nice . . . in her defence, I saw the room and it was definitely sub-standard housing for anybody. No natural light or air? I’ve lived in Korean dorm rooms and goshitel that were better.
09/09/2009 at 2:53 pm Permalink
I support this individual 100% but I have some problem with his emphasis on alleged fair and equal for “Caucasians.”
“I have often been, based on my skin color and nationality, treated in ways that I would not have been, had I been a Korean or a Caucasian,” he said.
While it is certainly true that people of darker skin color are often more discriminated against in Korean society, that doesn’t seem to be the issue here. It wasn’t as if a white guy and Korean had joined hands and attacked him or that a white guy was ignored while he was attacked. I don’t understand why in each quote the Prof. finds it necessary to emphasis this. Why not work with the non-citizen community as a whole? After all, unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’d realize that this year has had a lot of foreigner discrimination issues that included people of all races that are non-Korean.
Again, support the prof., but am confused by his approach.
10/09/2009 at 9:52 am Permalink
I wouldn’t get my knickers in a knot over this. First, I think we can all agree that non-caucasians have to deal with more, and more severe instances of discrimination here. Second, all the accounts I’ve read have had only one quote where he mentions ethnicity. Finally, we’re all aware of reliability problems in the news reports here . . .