Friday, June 24, 2011

Profile: Anti-Foreigner Spectrum Promotes Cultural Understanding

According to figures released last month by Statistics Korea, our homeland is becoming increasingly multicultural, leading to problems with immigrants who don’t understand how to behave. After one such incident in 2005, when pictures were taken of native-English teachers socializing with Korean women who were not modestly dressed or accompanied by a male relative, the Anti-Foreigner Spectrum was formed to reach out to these outsiders and properly educate them. But recently, instead of listening respectfully to these patriotic Koreans, some foreigners have engaged overseas media in brutally attacking the group, even though they are just trying to help.

Leader of the Anti-Foreigner Spectrum 42-year-old Kim, whose dedication to the fatherland has been so great over the years he hasn't had time to date or marry, explained how some stupid foreigners had deliberately used the group's gestures of friendship to present a false picture of its activities and beliefs. "We followed many native-English teachers all over Seoul just to try and be friends, but they wouldn't talk to us. We took pictures of them constantly hoping they would smile. We went through their trash to make sure they hadn't thrown anything away accidentally – yet all these job and women takers have done is accuse us of harassment." he told us.

Yet despite the unwillingness of these immigrants to be helped, the Anti-Foreigner Spectrum has made a great deal of progress domestically since the group was founded several years ago. Today, as a secret unit of the National Police Agency, the group plays a formal role in developing policy at the national level and it enjoys political and legal protection for its actions which are in the best interests of Korea. It's a long way from the earliest days of the group's history when members almost chose to name it 'Kill White in Korea'. Kim admits that some of his members' views in those days were unacceptable "Back then the experience of the Hutus in Rwanda was still fairly recent and homeland-loving Korean citizens thought anything was possible, but it would have been a lot of work, and unlike the Africans we have jobs to go to in the morning."

Kim hopes the senseless attacks on the Anti-Foreigner Spectrum by foreigners and their foreign media will end "we're very sensitive about it, it's very upsetting and I think it would be better if they stopped before someone gets hurt."

Related Links
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Korea activists target foreign English teachers
English teachers receive death threat

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