POLL, South Korea's hygiene standards

The OP specifically put in the context of a comparison

OP: As a developed nation (meaning in relation to other developed nations) is Korea....
DeMart: Well, actually other nations do this....
The Arbitrary: Why are you comparing other nations? We're talking about Korea!!!!!!!!

When you're talking about these things, you ARE comparing Korea to other countries. To say you aren't is ridiculous, it clearly is meant to be a comparison.

Don't whine because your assumptions are getting challenged and you are actually being challenged on your points and your thinking and that some of your preconceived notions are being proven false. Some people here love to come here and lob bombs, but the second they get challenged they throw a hissy fit about someone daring to disagree with them on the very terms that the debate started.

If you introduce an argument, the other side is free to take that argument and turn it against you. You can't complain that it's irrelevant after it has already been introduced.

If you want that to stand as a credible rebuttal, you'll need to create a sock account and re-post it.  Your posting history long establishes your knee jerk protective reaction to any post that criticizes anything Korean.  You've overreacted and gone on the war path literally thousands of times, so that ship has sailed.  When it comes to you, everyone knows what motivates you.  It's the why we can't figure out.  Why does it bother you, an American, so much if shade is thrown on Korea?  Most Koreans can accept criticisms of their country or habits but you can't.  This was a thread comparing Korean hygiene practices to Western ones.  Coming from the west we all know what those are, so it would be only logical that Korean habits would be brought up.  You're the only one that gets triggered by it.  We know what our shortcomings are, but let's discuss some Korean ones.  If someone started a thread about Korean meals at dinner, would you feel the need to interject with what constitutes a normal western dinner?  No.  You only jumped in here because you can't handle anything negative being said about Korea.  It would be interesting if you were out with me and the Koreans I spend the majority of my social time with and they shit on Korea, as they are wont to do.  You just wouldn't know how to react. 

It's the why we can't figure out.  Why does it bother you, an American, so much if shade is thrown on Korea? 

1) Genuinely, a lot of the rants and complaints people post on here are poorly thought-out, lacking in context, fixated on the worst possible explanation, etc. You think every one of those complaints are valid? You think every single one of my rebuttals has been invalid? I think a fair-minded person would at least go "Well, DeMart is right some of the time" but if you think I am wrong every single time and all those complaints are valid, well sorry, but the person who needs to change their view isn't me, it's you.
2) I genuinely want to help. I actually went through the "rant nonstop about Koreans" phase before I even got here. I did it back home. It was after some reflection and some maturing, that I realized I wasn't being fair, and that the ranting I was doing wasn't coming from a place of understanding. Furthermore, sometimes they were the ones that were right. However in this group of Koreans I was with, there was one American dude, a former English teacher, who understood what I was going through but he also did a lot of what I do here and it helped me to see both sides.

Coming from the west we all know what those are, so it would be only logical that Korean habits would be brought up.

1) If we did, and since we all care so much about solving the problem and blast Koreans for not changing their habits, wouldn't we be changing our habits and not doing them?
2) AGAIN- Why is it fair for people ranting about Korea to bring up how the compare to other countries, but it is wrong for people countering those points to bring up Korea? If you say "We are talking about Korea", fine. But don't bring up other countries or do a comparison and then bitch and moan when other countries are brought up or a comparison is done and it counters your point. And this is the problem- You bash me for not being objective, but you aren't even objective enough to realize that you think "bringing up other countries" is permissible only in one direction.

You only jumped in here because you can't handle anything negative being said about Korea. 

1) Again, false. I have a problem when I feel those complaints are baseless OR lacking in context OR are holding them to an unfair standard. Other times the complaint isn't wholly invalid, but the person complaining maybe should consider other explanations.

Anyways, to paraphrase Capt. Sisko from American History X, concerning all of this ranting and complaining people do here "venting" they call it-
Has any of this ranting made your life better?

It's essentially what my friend I mentioned above said to me. I had to admit that me bitching about Koreans all the time wasn't helping me in any way. And that is wasn't helping them. And it wasn't changing anything. And I certainly wasn't making any effort at anything to make the world a better place, not in any substantive sense.

Marty's been peddling the same excrement for years in his unequivocal defense of Korea's practices - going all the way back to when Dave's was a thing. He's got to be bored of posting this inane nonsense or there is just something wrong with him. I just pity him now that he has some mental deficiency that causes him to be constantly triggered to defend Korea after all his arguments have taking a beating.

You pluck some unrelated phenomenon out of the air (dog pee, cow dung, liquor stores with bulletproof glass, now handshakes...) and argue that you can't talk about spitting without talking about X. If you do, you're being arbitrary and hypocritical.

But these things do have to be taken as a whole as well. Yes, you can focus on a specific practice, but if you also don't look comprehensively at everything, then one has to wonder why you're focusing on a specific issue and not any others. For example, I am sure, you're familiar with people ranting about gun crime in Chicago. I think also, you know that this is really just a proxy for other resentments. From my perspective, the spitting thing is a bit like ranting about gun crime in Chicago and getting angry that anyone is pointing out broader issues that relate to it. Of course the gun crime in Chicago thing is often used to deflect from broader issues as well, and from your perspective it may seem like I am doing that.

The point is that we often narrow or broaden when it suits us, but what we can't do is broaden the argument and then complain when someone uses that broad point to counter our argument.

Whether you're conscious of it or not, this is probably your most commonly used argument strategy. Everyone is talking about A and you appear with, "The fact that you're not talking about B makes you all a bunch of narrow-minded hypocrites incapable of complex thinking." I've only been on this site for a couple of years and I've seen you called out on this probably ten times. Who knows how many times you were called out on it before I joined? But you still persist, as if it's a shortcut to guaranteed debate victory. It's not.

I'd say that in many rants, people will compare Korea to other places, then I will compare Korea to other places in a different direction, and then they complain about it. I've called this out repeatedly and people still persist in it.

But yes, it is true that if you focus on one and ignore others, especially if those others are potentially as bad or worse, that one has to wonder why this one is your focus and not the other. The answer, in humans, often comes down to irrationality and bias.

And also, those things are not wholly unrelated. Pet dogs defecating in the street IS NOT unrelated to the issue of people spitting in the street and cleanliness and hygiene.

The conversation had evolved from the very first post, where "developed nation" implied some degree of comparison. Nobody was talking about hygiene in the west. If you really wanted to talk about handshakes, a better way would have been, "Do you guys know that shaking hands is probably a more unhygienic practice than a lot of Westerners realize?" From there, a more natural conversation could have formed, and you could have waited to see whether or not anyone took the position that shaking hands is harmless and Asians are, on the whole, more unhygienic than Westerners. At which point it would have been fine to make the argument you had in your back pocket. Instead, you charged into the room and accused everyone of being bigoted hypocrites, based on the fact that they hadn't brought up a topic that you just introduced. This a pattern that repeats with you, again and again and again.

Interesting that you put this burden of reasonableness on me, but not on anyone else, especially those engaged in rants. Are you holding them to a similar standard of patience, focus on topic, consideration and so on? Do you think that threads wouldn't meander if I wasn't here? You don't think that other posters veer off topic or interject flawed points?

Then we also have to ask, given that almost no Koreans read this board and we have virtually zero influence over Korean society, why are the rants here almost exclusively aimed at Koreans? Why do people NOT start such threads? Why isn't there a thread about handshaking being a filthy practice and urging us to stop it? If a random Korean came on this board and posted such a thread, would our reaction be to agree and "stay on topic"? Or would we blast them with everything we have and list dozens of faults that Koreans make?

And finally, lets say there was a board called "Whitewithblack.org" or whatever and it was for white people who live in black communities and that the thread was dominated about people complaining about things that happen in black communities and that black people do. Would your reaction be "These are valid complaints and they are on topic. People here are trying to improve the community!" "I'm not hating on black people, I'm just complaining about the culture." "Why are you bringing up whites and Asians? The topic is black people! This is a board about living with black people!" I think most of us would have a very different reaction and while some might have valid complaints, I think at some point most would start to recognize that there were some issues. And NOT with the person challenging them on their rants and views.

Marty's been peddling the same excrement for years in his unequivocal defense of Korea's practices - going all the way back to when Dave's was a thing. He's got to be bored of posting this inane nonsense or there is just something wrong with him. I just pity him now that he has some mental deficiency that causes him to be constantly triggered to defend Korea after all his arguments have taking a beating.

Thank you for your review of my work.

At best I would call Korea a somewhat developed nation.

At best I would call Korea a somewhat developed nation.

I don't agree with Gandhi's quote 100%, but I think that kind of attitude check is needed among the people here who presume to sit in judgment of the nations and peoples of the world.

The essence of Korean hygiene is found in the fact that down the street from my apartment on a busy street in Daegu, there was a restaurant that had, lying outside year round, giant plastic bowls full of pig faces sitting in water.

Or the fact that in hospitals there often wasn't soap. First Korean hospital I went to had a bathroom where the sinks were ripped out for maintenance, but they still let people shit in the toilets without having sinks to wash their hands afterwards. IN A HOSPITAL.

That's fine in principle. But "looking comprehensively at everything" too often manifests as "You failed to bring up this random thing that I just introduced, you hypocrites."

You call it random, but often it is a blind spot.

I don't agree with this at all. If I went to a neighborhood in Sydney, London, Dublin, Seattle, Toronto, Cape Town or Auckland where, several times a day, I'd witness someone noisily dredge up mucous and then spray it in public with little regard for where it landed, I'd think, WTF is with all this spitting? It's disgusting.

But would you make it about Australians or Brits or Irish or Zulus or Maori or would you make it about the individual?

If there's a conversation about spitting and I contribute with "You simple-minded, culturally insular hypocrites haven't mentioned pigeons yet!", that doesn't excuse the spitting. The existence of B doesn't invalidate an argument against A.

But it does if they are focusing on something at the exclusion of something else or not properly balancing risk. "I'm concerned about Islamic Terrorism" is a point, but it's also fair to point out that you have a far greater likelihood of dying in a car accident than being beheaded by some Jihadi and that maybe people are doing a poor job of assessing risk and threat.

Because this is a website built by and for foreigners living in Korea. It's therefore rather predictable that some complaints will reflect frustrations foreigners have with Korea. I've stuck up for you about this in the past. I agree that some of the posts are quite unreasonable, or tend toward weird generalizations about Koreans when the offending party just happens to be a Korean individual. I've given those posts the mockery they were due. Some of the time you're right.

Thank you.

Would you also agree that it seems to disproportionately focus on Koreans? Would you also agree that if someone were to criticize NETs, particularly if the person was Korean, that the reaction would be rather agitated and that many of the same things people accuse me of doing would be said to that person?

It's a stretch, though, to say that every (or nearly every) complaint is motivated by ethnic animus when Koreans make the same complaints.

I don't think they all are or even the majority. I do think a sizable number are though. I think it's rather clear too.

If it appeared to be a widespread phenomenon peculiar to the culture, I would make it about Australians or Brits or whatever...

I would tend to defer to blaming the individual if something isn't in +80% practice. Even if you see it as "widespread" that can be very subjective and I don't think it's widespread enough to blame "Koreans" vs. individuals.

But living side-by-side with neighbors of a different ethnicity in your own country is a very different experience to living in a foreign country where you're part of an ethnic, linguistic and cultural minority. I'm white and I've lived in majority Latino neighborhoods in the US, and a majority South Asian area in the UK. Both of those situations were different from each other, and don't map directly onto my experience living in Korea.

No, but it is similar. If you are immersed in black or Latino culture on a daily basis and the people you deal with constantly are black or Latino, would it still be right to make such comments? Of course not! If you moved to Puerto Rico or Ghana it wouldn't be right (or at least very eyebrow raising).

I think they're owed the benefit of the doubt that there are more factors than ethnicity that influence their perspective.

It's pretty easy to spot the difference between say, confused newbie or even-handed person raising an issue vs. waygook.orger who is posting their umpteenth rant and blast.

Do you think that this has convinced anyone that loudly dredging up mucous and flinging it on the sidewalk is not a disgusting, antisocial and unsanitary practice? Do you think one person has been moved by these arguments? (By the way, if anyone has, you're welcome to speak up here...)

My point isn't that it's disgusting. It's to point out the inconsistency in disgust and to make the person question whether there is a rational basis for that disgust or whether that disgust is arbitrary. Furthermore, the claim is often made of sanitation/public health NOT disgust. It is only after the obvious hypocrisy on the sanitation/public health question is acknowledged, that the argument transitions to disgust (which is what it really is about in the first place. Public health was just a convenient tool).

You know what no one ever says? The REAL reason they think it's okay for owners to let their pets dogs piss and shit on the street and a Korean person who spits is scum: They like dogs more than Koreans. Now, as inflammatory as that sounds, lets be reasonable and acknowledge that a lot of people like animals more than average humans of any persuasion. When one is associated with cuteness and hugs and the other is associated with everything from nuclear war to psycho SO, you're going to get different impulsive reactions.

But at the end of the day, the person should step back and acknowledge they're being arbitrary and agree that "Either A) I should hold both spitters AND pet owners to account or B) I should let both slide". That is the rational response. The irrational response is to refuse to acknowledge that point and to rant about me being an apologist.

None of what you said makes me feel any better about walking behind someone who's just summoned up a big gob of phlegm and launched it at my feet, or left a big puddle at the entrance of my building. The fact that my disgust may not be evenly balanced with a dog squirting on a fire hydrant, and this may indicate some degree of less-than-perfect rationality, really is irrelevant. It's a completely unmoving argument.

What you don't recognize is that when you focus only on one single group and don't commit to the problem as a whole, people will assume, quite justifiably, that really your target is that group and not "public cleanliness and health" or whatever claim the person made. What I am essentially asking is for the person to put up or shut up- Either you really believe this public cleanliness and health stuff or you don't. And when they just argue and not agree, I think it becomes self-evident that really they just wanted to rant about Koreans, NOT make the situation better.

A person who is genuinely worried about public cleanliness would also have the same disgust towards dogs and spitting (actually to Aristocrat's credit, I think he has ranted about dogs before too). They'd freely agree with my point and be like "Hell yeah, I think they're disgusting too!" Then I can understand what their motives are.

But again, I think you'll find almost universal, cross-cultural consensus that most humans would rather inhabit an urban environment with less spit, not more. So as an argument for why people should stop complaining about Koreans spitting, your approach doesn't work.

Again, see above. It really comes down to sussing out what someone really thinks underneath. To give a parallel example, it's why a lot of Pro-Choicers don't buy Pro-Life claims that they care about life when they don't support funding for child care and health and so on. "If you're Pro-Life, shouldn't you be..." It's why Catholics who are against the Death Penalty, Abortion, anti-nuclear weapons and pro-social welfare come across as much more credible vs. Protestants who are against Abortion but also pro-death penalty and pro-war. And while sometimes people place impossible demands on the other side, other times it is true that inconsistency shows that something is off.

Also, one other goal is that I hope it stops the boiling anger and disgust. I know that feeling and that anger. But one thing that helped me avoid that kind of irrational hate and anger, and I had to learn this, was remembering either personal or societal flaws of my own kind. Case in point this whole pandemic. There's been more than a few situations where I either saw an individual Korean person or some government rule or whatever and I started getting angry in my head and doing a self-rant, but you know what calms me down? The reminder that from a Korean's perspective, my country looks like a disaster and maybe I shouldn't throw too many stones. If I'm going to rant to them about spitting and being dirty, is that really going to work after us Americans and the Koreans have had the results we have had in the biggest crisis humanity has collectively faced since the nuclear apocalypse threat of the Cold War? Am I really in a place to bitch and moan and tell them they're stupid and dirty?

Like, shouldn't this entire event have been a massive check on the assumptions of many regarding Koreans and their society? This country thinks its doing a bad job because 1,700 people a day are getting infected. Like, come on. At the very least, maybe we should tone things down a notch? Maybe not be quite so certain in our takes? Maybe be a bit more accepting of some counters to our points?

And my core point with all of it was this- Hasn't this pandemic proved that our concerns over certain Korean sanitation practices were dramatically overblown? And also, aren't some of the things we think protect us, maybe aren't as effective as we think they are? And now, to add, maybe some of our practices need to be scrutinized for being filthy.

I would tend to defer to blaming the individual if something isn't in +80% practice. Even if you see it as "widespread" that can be very subjective and I don't think it's widespread enough to blame "Koreans" vs. individuals.

Here it is; the biggest lie ever told on this site.  And there have been some impressive loads of B.S. thrown up here.  Martino, you have blamed westerners as a group on here based on a single poster's comments far more times than I have ever even posted.  Your credibility didn't have far to fall but how did you even type those sentences let alone hit "Post?"  If you had to ask someone to pick one person who blames the culture or nationality over the individual, people would say Demartino before you could even finish the question.  How many times have we all been labelled as "entitled westerners" because of one person's comments?  You never blame the individual when you have the chance to shoot down an entire society.  Unbelievable horsesh*t. 

I couldn't bother reading anything beyond that first part. 

Here it is; the biggest lie ever told on this site.  And there have been some impressive loads of B.S. thrown up here.  Martino, you have blamed westerners as a group on here based on a single poster's comments far more times than I have ever even posted.  Your credibility didn't have far to fall but how did you even type those sentences let alone hit "Post?"  If you had to ask someone to pick one person who blames the culture or nationality over the individual, people would say Demartino before you could even finish the question.  How many times have we all been labelled as "entitled westerners" because of one person's comments?  You never blame the individual when you have the chance to shoot down an entire society.  Unbelievable horsesh*t. 

I couldn't bother reading anything beyond that first part. 

Post examples and I will discuss.

While KimchiNinja's point is a trollish one, he is right about one thing…

If you aren't flinging the same level of hate and rage towards hand shakers as you are spitters or dish sharers, then you're just being at best completely arbitrary, at worst you're a bigot.

You always do this peculiar and unnecessarily hostile thing of wholesale dismissing my value as a forum member, and then agreeing with my comments. Surely you will have some long pedantic “reasoning” for this, which we don’t need to hear.

Anyhow, you correctly checkmate the entire thread by piggybacking on my post—anyone who is not consistently applying hygiene: shoes in the house and hand shaking, is a cultural supremacist/evangelical and a bigot (what else would it be?). Travel is an opportunity to shatter these biases.

Post examples and I will discuss.

No.  It's hard enough to read some of your instant hackles up defenses of anything Korea as is.  I'm hardly going to wade through volumes of your postings a second time.  Anyways, what would the point be?  First, everyone here knows that you time and time again blame westerner's sense of superiority and entitlement for one person's comments.  It's laughable that you would try and claim otherwise.  Second, all you would do is ad nauseum type seventeen paragraphs of crap that are largely misdirection and the other person arguing would, for the most part, have long moved on to something else while you're still blathering in a one way argument.  Unless the other person was Gogators or Adel.  They'll stick around while everyone else decides "You know what?  Maybe I will give one of those Kevin Grabb videos a look." 

Everyone here knows that you time and time again blame westerner's sense of superiority and entitlement for one person's comments.

The reality is this is a 300+ year trend—starting with the British Empire supremacists who saw all non-white civilizations as “savages,” then they got into ships and went to America & Australia where they created the same culture. Now the modern decedents, who inherited that same cultural supremacist thinking, are in Korea posting on these forums (and not banned). They are posting millions of hate comments online about Chinese (anti “hate speech” corporate rules suddenly vanished). They are abusing Asians in the street in America, as encouraged by racist state propaganda (Trump et al). On and on goes this bigoted cultural lineage founded on “exceptionalism” and “manifest destiny.”

So, “just one person’s comments” is a radically ahistorical take. It’s a macro-historic trend. Fact!

everyone should just always post everything with a disclaimer from now on. i'll provide an example (which you are free to use) below.

i think spitting on the street is really gross. (disclaimer: i am not perfect. i was not born in a perfect place. in my country, people shake hands, a cultural practice that i acknowledge is wretched. every day, my countrymen post millions of hate comments about Chinese. there are murders, some of which are racially motivated. we even wear our shoes inside the house. again, i come from a deeply flawed society.)

Marty doesn't need people to debate with. 10 years from now he'll still be arguing with forum bots about Korea's inadequacies.

Marty doesn't need people to debate with. 10 years from now he'll still be arguing with forum bots about Korea's inadequacies.

Mask wear a mask. It is not hygienic to spit in the street angry when you don't wear a mask. It is not hygiene is a joke. Koreans angry when you don't wearing is good, however. When you don't wear a mask. It is a joke. Korean hygienic to spit in the street. Mask wear a mask. It is not hygiene is a joke. Koreans constantly spit in then get and then get and then get angry when you don't wearing is not hygienic to spit in the street. Mask wear a mask. It is good, however. It is not hygienic to spit in the street. Mask wearing is good, however. The street.

Marty doesn't need people to debate with. 10 years from now he'll still be arguing with forum bots about Korea's inadequacies.

Aren't you another one of these posters that has moved away from Korea yet still comes here to post?

"Marty will still come here to argue"
- MayorHaggar, gogators!, Adel...all of whom have allegedly moved on

Someone calling for a blanket ban on Koreans entering another country should praised for their street smarts and political nous, not condemned for promoting xenophobia. Right?

Trump did add North Korea to the ban list. I had no problem with it. All the time people were claiming he would destroy the Korean Peninsula in WWIII, I didn't agree. Trump was acting in what he believed to be the best interests of America for the American people, as he should.

I dunno, one side did end up cheering Kim Jong Eun's sister because she gave a look at Mike Pence, because obviously someone who has ordered people executed and thrown in gulags is not as bad as someone who wants to ban 3rd trimester abortion or lower capital gains taxes.

Don't get mad- Make better arguments and points! Also, maybe people should understand that if they rant, they might not be thinking clearly and they shouldn't get testy because someone disagreed with their emotional venting.