Are Waygooks "the fall guy"?

[mamaujeni]

I'll open with a couple of examples:

a) A group of NTs are standing outside a restaurant, waiting for a table.  Two Korean kids come bounding out of the restaurant and in their enthusiasm, knock over and break a neon sign.  They ghost away as all eyes of restaurant patrons rest heavily on the "offending" waygooks.
b) We climb up to Namsan tower where a tour is taking place in Korean.  We wait politely for the speaker to finish before slipping past.  Another Korean chappy decked out in his full climbing gear bumps into a metal gate which comes unhinged and swings heavily shut.  All eyes of the tour rest heavily on the "offening" waygooks.
c) Today during our emergency drill, I saw a little boy push an even smaller boy into the net of a goal post.  I untangled the wee lad and helped him onto his feet.  The next beat, he tripped over himself and fell.  All eyes rest heavily on the "offending" waygook (including those of the slighted, confused boy).  Even as I put him back on his feet, he was giving me a "I can't believe you pushed me look." lol

So this is intended to be a lighthearted run down of times you wish you weren't so bloody visible! ^_^

[didi]

Haha.  I don't think this is always true.  We do stick out quite a bit, but I don't think we get the blame for everything.

[LoloRising]

I think I've had more of an opposite experience! Like, I get to do more because I'm foreign...example, at a bird festival, there was a falconer who let my friends and I wear the big glove and hold the bird while event people snapped photos...no one else got to do it and it was a wicked time!

[Paul]

I think I've had more of an opposite experience! Like, I get to do more because I'm foreign...example, at a bird festival, there was a falconer who let my friends and I wear the big glove and hold the bird while event people snapped photos...no one else got to do it and it was a wicked time!

Congrats on your first foray into the mysterious world of advertisement modelling. ;)

[leporello]

I'm not sure if we're the fall guy... But what I am sure of is that a majority of koreans tend to look at us as being a bit slow, stupid, dumb, you name it...

Waegooks of the world, I'm sorry to let you in on this, but we just don't seem to possess that special Korean "awesomeness" that seems to set K's apart from the rest of the world>>>

Pity, huh :D :D

[menschmaschine]

u bad luck bro

Anyway, it kind of sucks not being able to explain really simple stuff, but I can't really relate.

[SBracken]

I think another part of it too could be that it's just a better excuse for natives to stare at foreigners- doesn't matter if they  blame us for something or not, we're somehow sooo interesting to look at :p

[aramella]

I'm sorry to nitpick but it drives me crazy.  "Waygook" means foreign.  "Waygook-in" means foreigner.  Sorry but it has to be stated. 

[flasyb]

I'm sorry to nitpick but it drives me crazy.  "Waygook" means foreign.  "Waygook-in" means foreigner.  Sorry but it has to be stated.

Hey, no worries. Thanks!

[actualstarfish]

I'll open with a couple of examples:

a) A group of NTs are standing outside a restaurant, waiting for a table.  Two Korean kids come bounding out of the restaurant and in their enthusiasm, knock over and break a neon sign.  They ghost away as all eyes of restaurant patrons rest heavily on the "offending" waygooks.
b) We climb up to Namsan tower where a tour is taking place in Korean.  We wait politely for the speaker to finish before slipping past.  Another Korean chappy decked out in his full climbing gear bumps into a metal gate which comes unhinged and swings heavily shut.  All eyes of the tour rest heavily on the "offening" waygooks.
c) Today during our emergency drill, I saw a little boy push an even smaller boy into the net of a goal post.  I untangled the wee lad and helped him onto his feet.  The next beat, he tripped over himself and fell.  All eyes rest heavily on the "offending" waygook (including those of the slighted, confused boy).  Even as I put him back on his feet, he was giving me a "I can't believe you pushed me look." lol

So this is intended to be a lighthearted run down of times you wish you weren't so bloody visible! ^_^

Yeah. Happens all the time to me. My first couple months I tried desperately to stand up for Korea by writing these things off as a misunderstanding or even as my fault in some illogical way. However, what I've found is that most Koreans are xenophobic and/or racist to varying degrees towards non-Koreans and this is one of the ways in which it is enacted. Once you start to learn some Korean you realize that its not just innocent staring. Its sad really. I wish I could come back to Korea 40 years from now the same age as I am now and have the same job. I feel like attitudes towards foreigners would be a lot better by then. Alas, I'm stuck teaching here because I need the experience to lend me the qualifications to go somewhere else.

I'm glad that some of you have had the luck to avoid experiences like this.

[justanotherwaygook]

I'm sorry to nitpick but it drives me crazy.  "Waygook" means foreign.  "Waygook-in" means foreigner.  Sorry but it has to be stated.

The vernacular among expats in Korea use both; see my hastily made username^^

Anyways, the real Korean words are not waygook and waygookin.  They're 외국 and 외국인.  ;)

[aramella]

I'm sorry to nitpick but it drives me crazy.  "Waygook" means foreign.  "Waygook-in" means foreigner.  Sorry but it has to be stated.

The vernacular among expats in Korea use both; see my hastily made username^^

Anyways, the real Korean words are not waygook and waygookin.  They're 외국 and 외국인.  ;)

har har har funny guy.   

[zachmokpo]

A teacher punched a student in my class. The student called the police on the teacher and the whole thing was somehow my fault.

[justanotherwaygook]

A teacher punched a student in my class. The student called the police on the teacher and the whole thing was somehow my fault.

I remember that thread.

I think your post gets the award for inappropriately placed smiley of the day.   ;)

[mamaujeni]

Holy god! that's insane, and I definitely agree with justanotherwaygook re the charmingly misplaced smiley :D

[jessicateacher]

maybe you just look guilty. . . .

[mamaujeni]

that's quite possibly at least half of it jessicateacher...

i'm going to start sporting a mask, dark glasses and a visor... ironically, a less suspicious look round these here parts...

<_<

>_>

[ironopolis]

To answer the OP's question, IMO the answer is 'no, usually not at all'. Sometimes it's actually the opposite, as I find you can often get away with things here that you wouldn't were you not a foreigner.

However, what does often happen when you're in a fairly homogenous country like this, where you don't look like the locals and don't understand what they're saying, is that the insecurity this situation naturally creates leads you to think that everyone is talking about you, everyone is looking at you and everyone is blaming you for everything that goes wrong anywhere within a ridiculously large radius of where you're standing.

When you're fluent in the language, you'll know that this just paranoid nonsense and that whilst a few Koreans here and there will notice your presence, an overwhelming majority really don't care about you any more than they would about any other complete stranger, and the number actively badmouthing you for no reason at all is practically non-existent.

Unfortunately, a little knowledge is sometimes dangerous in minds who don't realise how little it is. There are of course people who, already in a state of mind that has them looking way too hard for the constantly foreigner-cussing Koreans they assume to be everywhere, start to learn a little bit of the language and pick up the odd word they think they've overheard and just assume what the remaining 90% they didn't understand was.

To be fair though, it's by no means whatsoever only foreigners in Korea that are guilty of this. And I do sympathise with the OP quite a lot because I've been through thinking the same kind of things myself in the past, in a different (but similar) country.

[barbeeb22]

I would say that I am generally ignored more often than not because people just don't want the hassle of communicating with a waygook. People tend to forget that eye contact and body language is also a form of communication so most people won't even give me any eye contact or acknowledge that I exist. Which is perfectly fine for me, because those that do go out of their way to communicate with me or show me or express some recognition of my existence on this planet are the only ones that are worth communicating with in my opinion. So I think we get less attention being foreigners. Especially the more you are around the same group of Koreans (i.e. coworkers, friends) because the novelty of being a foreigner eventually wears off.

[woman-king]

I could see this happening, but a lot of times I think playing the 'dumb foreigner' card has gotten more more help/given me a pass when I'd possibly done something culturally insensitive.