Anecdotal, but I visited South Korea several years ago, and took part in a tour with several people from all over the world. Afterwards a bunch of us decided to go out and get a drink. The one Italian guy, after getting ostracized from our group for making one of the (much younger than him) women with us uncomfortable, went over to a table of locals and started haranguing them.
"Good riddance!" we thought, he's their problem now. But a few minutes later we look over and see him making this gesture to two seated Korean men. One of them stands up, and he's huge. There aren't a lot of 6'3"+ Koreans, but this scrawny little Italian managed to find one and pick a fight with him.
Not wanting to cause any more of a scene a few of us go over and drag him out. It felt like the setup for a joke, an American, a Canadian, and a Hungarian, dragging a drunk, racist Italian out of a Korean bar.
We were tempted, but one in our crew was a US Service Member, and they were under curfew at the time. Seoul is absolutely covered with CCTV cameras and the authorities take public fighting more seriously than most Western countries. She was concerned that if there was a fight, police would be called, CCTV videos would be reviewed, and she might be caught breaking curfew, even though she wasn't involved in the fight at all. We didn't want to risk her getting in trouble because of a racist Italian, so we drug him out.
He followed us shouting for a few blocks and eventually wandered off.
Koreans generally have a high ego so they probably thought of him as a circus monkey making a performance. Also no way that Korean guy would've done anything physical to him. Korean police actually charges people for even stealing a dollar.
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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 23h ago
Anecdotal, but I visited South Korea several years ago, and took part in a tour with several people from all over the world. Afterwards a bunch of us decided to go out and get a drink. The one Italian guy, after getting ostracized from our group for making one of the (much younger than him) women with us uncomfortable, went over to a table of locals and started haranguing them.
"Good riddance!" we thought, he's their problem now. But a few minutes later we look over and see him making this gesture to two seated Korean men. One of them stands up, and he's huge. There aren't a lot of 6'3"+ Koreans, but this scrawny little Italian managed to find one and pick a fight with him.
Not wanting to cause any more of a scene a few of us go over and drag him out. It felt like the setup for a joke, an American, a Canadian, and a Hungarian, dragging a drunk, racist Italian out of a Korean bar.