Earlier in the year I posted a friends essay about violence in Korea but I wanted to talk about the subject a little more myself. In many ways Korea is much less violent than the US or England. They have very few guns or weapons. The youth do not form many gangs, although they due exist. It is safe to say that serious life threatening violence is much lower here in Korea than in the US.
In Korea the students carry razor knifes around to cut paper and for art class. No one attacks anyone else with them.(I'm sure there are exceptions to that statement but they are rare.) In the US if you were to carry around one of these razor knifes you would be suspended or expelled and possibly charged with a crime and sent to jail. But no one seems to worry about it at all here. They also will sometimes bring air soft guns(plastic bb guns that sting when you are shot with them) to school sometimes. Sometimes the guns are taken away, sometimes they are just told to put them away and not bring them again. Even though these guns are relatively harmless they would also be just cause for suspension, expulsion or incarceration in the States.
Koreans view guns as if they were the black plague. They often ask how I can sleep at night in America without worrying about when I will get shot as if it was a certainty. They probably get this opinion from TV and movies because while we have more guns in the US than almost anywhere else in the world, I still don't have any friends or family that I know of that has been shot or even shot at. I have seen guns many times of course but never has anyone actually shot one except for in controlled recreational uses. But never the less Koreans assume we still live in the wild west were disputes are handled with guns in the streets.
That said there is a lot of domestic violence in Korea. I live in a relatively liberal, middle class part of the US, so maybe there is more domestic violence in other areas of the country. But in Korea it is not uncommon to view acts of domestic violence that in the US might happen less frequently but would be behind closed doors. Plus if I am seeing this amount just imagine how much must happen behind closed doors here. People just seem to accept it here. My second week here a buddy of mine and I got into a fight (it was more posturing and pushing than actual blows) with some douche bag because he pushed this girl to the ground outside a club and was about to kick her. My buddy yelled at him in Korean to stop and he also called him something to the effect of a dog fucker. After that the guy ignored the girl and rushed over to my friend,he picked up a sign and started waving it in the air. He didn't have the guts to actual hit my buddy, but he kept yelling and pushing him and eventually me for another 5 minutes, even as we walked away. Finally we got tired of it and pushed back and then he left. As a foreigner you can't actually hit a Korean regardless of who's fault it is you will be blamed. Luckily my friend had been here for 4 years and knew this otherwise my stay here might have been very short. Not that violence was needed because in several instances I have noticed that if you are aggressive here the people will back down quickly, its all show. Plus we just wanted him to stop attacking the woman which he did when he focused his intoxicated anger on us.
In Cleveland were I'm from if you did this it could get you shot, even in the suburbs were I grew up it would lead to a fight for sure. But here in Korea the men only seem to like to get in fights with there women or when the odds are stacked in there favor. Of course this isn't a theory that should be tested as there are people here who like to fight just as anywhere else. This is just a generalization. Plus men who hit women are usually cowards, this is true everywhere even in the States.
This wasn't the last time I saw domestic violence up close. There was a guy in my old apartment building who used to beat his girlfriend on a semi-regular basis. He almost always did it behind a steel door. We would call the cops but they didn't seem to care. One time he was beating here outside and the cops were called and he hit one of the officers. He was taken to the jail but was back home and hitting his girlfriend again within the hour. After that we stopped bothering with it, his girlfriend didn't seem to want us to stop it and the cops didn't care.
I have witnessed 5-6 acts of domestic violence in my 10 months here and heard what I thought were a few more. It seems that Korea is somewhat like America in the 50's where no one wants to get involved in other couples problems and they just ignore it. That seems to work for them but my friends and I can't seem to adopt this cultural trait.
With that said in general Korea is a less violent place than the US. I always feel safe here no matter where I am,that is unless I am sticking up for some women who is usually just upset that I intervened anyway. I have learned here that it is better to just walk away as the women here don't seem to mind being beaten or at least they have accepted the fact that it will happen to them. Each culture has it good and bad sides, in Korea violence is no exception.
