Expat Clubgoers Have a Blast Assaulting Korean Women on Camera

By Katie J.M. Baker | July 15, 2013 | 9:00pm

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A Facebook video of two Western men aggressively harassing a young Korean woman has gone viral in South Korea, sparking both outrage against the notoriously dickish expat community and, inevitably, discussion as to whether the terrified girl was asking for it.

The woman’s face is blurred in the shortened video above (you can watch the full video here, but know that it’s incredibly, horribly awful). She’s drunk, crying, and clearly very afraid. The Western men — it’s unclear where they’re from — move her around by pulling her hair and grabbing her chin. “We gotta get a picture of this bitch,” they say, describing her body as if she doesn’t exist.”We’ve gotta get the boobs in there.” Soon, things escalate even further. Here’s how the Washington Post‘s Max Fisher describes it:

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Then, as if bored with merely harassing her, they grow more sadistic. The first man sticks his finger up her nose. She pulls back to resist but he leans in and shouts, “I see a booger.” His friend eggs him on — “Dude, make her eat it,” he says — and the two burst into laughter when he shoves his finger, now smeared with snot, into the back of her throat. They tell her she’s disgusting. When one of them discovers some discoloration on her teeth, pulling her lips back to show to the camera, he starts shoving her, punishing her for displeasing him. He shouts at her to get plastic surgery, “like every other little Korean [girl].” At first, when she tries to resist, he won’t let her go. But, after several thrashes, she’s able to pull herself away, clearly rattled, and walk off. They shout angrily after her, hurling insults, and the video ends.

When Fisher sent the video to friends who had spent time in Korea with other expats, they said that the video represented an “extreme and highly unusual case” of a common incident: young Western men getting wasted and harassing local women in public. Of course, many think the real problem is the girl — who, in a surprising “happy ending” to the video, finally pushes the guys off, says “fuck you,” and leaves — because she dared to wear a tank top and drink at a club.

“She went crazy over white guys, lived at a club, and ran into trouble,” one Jagei.com commenter surmised. Another wrote, “After that, I think she’s going to go clubbing to meet white guys again.”

Related: South Korea has the widest gender gap in the developed world.

Update: the video was staged.

[Washington Post]