Korean Taxi Driver Assaulted by a Foreigner.

[Sara]

Let's keep responses polite and on topic. This is your first warning.

[donuts81]

Ummm.....am I missing something here? Price gouging, breaking and entering, male assaults female, insurance fraud and blackmail vs white knight.

Yes the taxi driver was injured and probably deserved some kind of compensation for his injuries but definitely not the 60 million won he was trying to blackmail out of the NET.

I'm not even 100% sure the NET "beat him" as suggested. It sounds more like bad luck to me. You don't chip a tooth and fracture your knee without any other bruising from a beating, you get those injuries from being pushed over and hitting concrete when someone is trying to stop you from attacking a woman.

Also remind me again why it is the woman is not allowed to press separate assault charges? Oh! It's because the taxi driver wasn't able to get compensation for his injuries that he sustained while attacking her.....that makes perfect sense.

Interesting legal system.

[Janitor]

the legal system is interesting and I find it disgraceful that an incident like this is making headlines when taxi drivers prey on innocent drunk women all the time and yet the group that is protesting is not making any thing of it.

This sounds to me like the taxi driver tried to get money the group and is either lying or making his injuries out to be more than they are. I have seen this done in Korea before. I had a friend who kicked a drunk Korean guy out of his bar (verbally) and the guy fell down some stairs. he hit his head on the way down so, some foreigners helped him into a cab and got him to a hospital.

Later the guy came back with the police and tried to charge him with assault. the matter went to court about 3 times and each time the guy changed his story. What it boiled down to was the guy was trying to land a major cash settlement. In Korea you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent. Thankfully because of the Korean guy's story, the charges were dropped. make a note that the Korean guy was allowed to bring in whoever he wanted to speak for him, but the foreign witnesses were not allowed.

The biggest challenge here is the "US vs Them" When you have citizen groups rally public opinion coupled with horrible journalism, it is hard to get any fair judgement. Just look at the case of the Korean Oil Spill. A samsung ship crashed into a docked tanker and the captain of the docked ship was charged because he purged the tanks to avoid a serious explosion. Nothing happened to the Korean ship even though they cause the accident.

[SBracken]

I'm not even 100% sure the NET "beat him" as suggested. It sounds more like bad luck to me. You don't chip a tooth and fracture your knee without any other bruising from a beating, you get those injuries from being pushed over and hitting concrete when someone is trying to stop you from attacking a woman.

yea, I would like to point that out as well. Seriously, what did this evil white devil do? Whip out a brick wallet and- of all places- go for the guy's knee? the front of it?? And then, just to really insult him, chip one of his teeth? First thing a person goes for is the face or stomach. Maybe there were other injuries, although I doubt it as I'm sure the Korean media would have reported every scratch on the guy. While the rest are at least moderately explain-away-able, this plot hole is a bit too big for me.

Also remind me again why it is the woman is not allowed to press separate assault charges? Oh! It's because the taxi driver wasn't able to get compensation for his injuries that he sustained while attacking her.....that makes perfect sense.

also just plain ridiculous... I think it's perfectly believable that a Korean man would get a little too close for comfort with a female. Sometimes that's just a cultural thing (as told by a co-worker: 'Korean space different', love the guy), but sometimes it's beyond a cultural difference and it's inappropriate. It's happened to others and I know it's happened to me...


I too wish we could get the american's story, but in the end we'll probably never know the objective truth, and there's likely some fault on both sides. In all cases, it's just sad that a simple thing as taking a cab home can become such a volatile matter.

[ironopolis]

Seems odd that everyone is automatically taking the Native Teacher's side even though both sides of the conflict have subjective stories. There are few solid facts in all of this.

Absolutely nail on head.

Also, a lot of people are making rather large leaps to a conclusion that the taxi driver had some pervy motive in chasing after the woman passenger. I've read a fair bit from various sources in both Korean and English about this and whilst who was in the wrong and by how much between the driver and the woman is not clear at all, there seems to be no evidence whatsoever pointing to any such motive on his part. It seems clear he pursued her because of a dispute over the fare. Whether justifiably or not, we don't know.

I wouldn't be surprised if the taxi driver is exaggerating the extent of the injuries he suffered. After all, that's what lot of assault victims the world over do when they're claiming compensation.

However, there doesn't appear to any dispute that the American guy DID assault the taxi driver. And we know he did subsequently flee the country. Given those two facts, I think the reaction of the media is pretty standard. In lots of countries all over the world, if you assault a local and then flee the country you're not exactly going to be Mr Popular.

Something else that people should remember is the way that assault is dealt with legally in Korea. Here, they don't so much look at the reasons for it but focus on the result. The legal system here doesn't really approve of people taking the law into their own hands and if you injure someone else more than they injure you, then you'll be expected to pay for it.

[Yu_Bumsuk]

Presumably Mr M will never be coming back to Korea again. Couldn't he issue a statement giving his side of things?

I'll tell you this, though, I'd pay 60 thousand won to see the tantrum Mr Kim threw after he found out he wasn't going to be getting a cent.

[Paju Leigh]

I saw this interview on the morning news a couple of weeks ago.
Mr Kim/Park?Lee whatever his name is ( I can't remember) seems to be playing up his injuries. 8 weeks of dental surgery?! Come on it's a chipped tooth! I had 3 weeks of dental surgery to get a wisdom tooth extracted ( and that was when I was pregnant and couldn't have any pain relief)

We don't know the whole story, but it only seems we ( as in the rest of Korea) got the Korean version. I wonder what the uproar would be like it it was a Korean man had done that to a foreign guy. Or if the media got a hold of the many creepy taxi drivers assaulting foreign women ... I think it wouldn't even get a reference

[carr0444]

The taxi driver admits to breaking through the door to get at the girl, and admits to "giving her a touch" (hard to believe he calmed down much after busting down the door), so I have trouble believing the American man that "assaulted" the Korean man used any kind of "excessive" force.  It sounds to me like the taxi driver got thrown, and not beat (punches/kicks).  It would make sense to grapple with and throw someone if they were getting physical with a 3rd party.  A chipped tooth and busted knee sound like injuries from a bad landing after a throw.  If you punch someone in the mouth, their tooth won't chip like his did (see the picture on the original link).  It'll break in half or come out all together.  Aggressive assaults have injuries like black eyes, broken noses, knocked out teeth, broken ribs, and dislocated jaws.  A chipped tooth and cracked knee cap with no other reported injuries, scream of "get the f- off, self defense".   

[ironopolis]

FWIW, the Anyang case was front page news for some time on the two Korean news sites that I look at most - one of them (YTN) is probably the biggest news only channel in Korea. In fact, I'd say if the victim hadn't been a foreigner it probably would have got less attention than it did. Unfortunately, attacks like the one alleged in that case happen to Korean women sufficiently often to be not that newsworthy.

However, such analogies are meaningless anyway. The element making the taxi driver case newsworthy was the assailant fleeing the country. Had that bit not happened I doubt we'd ever have had this thread or know anything about the story and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have made the news.

[jh64487]

However, such analogies are meaningless anyway. The element making the taxi driver case newsworthy was the assailant fleeing the country. Had that bit not happened I doubt we'd ever have had this thread or know anything about the story and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have made the news.

I'm just curious Iron, are you suggesting that, if you were in the same situation as the male foreigner you'd have stayed?  Regardless of the details of the interaction the result was the foreign male (who had acted in good faith to protect someone he felt was in danger) facing a legal system well understood (if not outright proven) to be biased against foreigners with a jail term or the equivalent damages of 3 years of employment hanging over his head.  There was no video of the incident so it was a foreigners word against a Koreans, and we all know how that plays out.  It would certainly have been different if the woman had been a national, but as a foreigner, as noted, she has no power or say in the incident either.  With that kind of doubt in my mind I'd be out of here as well (first plane and **** this country very much too) and I would suggest that nearly anyone else would as well.

Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying my time in Korea, but headlines like this cast heavy clouds over my day.  Oh!  And I'm not claiming you're being hypocritical or naive or anything like that, I'm simply pointing out that this man deciding to flee the country (losing who knows how much or what), in what is really a very easily defensible case AND the inability of the woman to prosecute her own case, should be making Koreans looks much more shrewdly at their own justice system, rather than people who flee from it.  From my point of view his decisions to flee was proactive and intelligent.

[donuts81]

FWIW, the Anyang case was front page news for some time on the two Korean news sites that I look at most - one of them (YTN) is probably the biggest news only channel in Korea. In fact, I'd say if the victim hadn't been a foreigner it probably would have got less attention than it did

I removed the post. It was a little off topic and really wasn't adding anything to the discussion. Just  to play devil's advocate for a moment though... Do you think there would have been less news coverage if the victim had been a Korean woman and the three assailants foreigners?

[ironopolis]

I'm just curious Iron, are you suggesting that, if you were in the same situation as the male foreigner you'd have stayed? 

No, I wasn't making any judgment one way or the other of his decision to flee the country. I was simply pointing out that this without this element, the story would probably never have been newsworthy.

[pizza hamburger]

The guy writing Gust of Popular Feeling puts a lot of stock into two anonymous posts on the internet.

I agree with the people saying you don't really know the full story.

[Yu_Bumsuk]

The guy writing Gust of Popular Feeling puts a lot of stock into two anonymous posts on the internet.

I agree with the people saying you don't really know the full story.

That's very true - which is all the more reason why I wish Mr M would contact a media source and do an interview. Him not doing so makes me wonder if this isn't just a case of two people who deserved each other meeting.

[Natz]

I saw a Korean lady/girl go crazy and hit a cab driver in Hongdae. They got out of the cab in the middle of the street and it went on for quite a bit, I was just worried that he might hit her back!! Extreme