Entry prohibited for foreigners

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By Scott Shepherd

"Oegugin churip geumji," said the doorman. Entry prohibited for foreigners.

This article was nearly a very angry one. After I was denied entry to a bar two weeks ago for not being Korean, I was fulminating internally over the piece that I would write.

I was going to write about the closemindedness and inherent insularity of Korea that the "no foreigners" rule reveals. Why should anyone support Busan's bid for the 2030 World Expo if the people it seeks to attract are not welcome here? Why should Scottish distillers or Belgian brewers sell their products to Korean pubs that refuse entry to the very people who created that precious nectar? Why should woke fans abroad laud K-pop as something special or somehow anti-racist when some of the genre's biggest stars (members of BlACKPINK and Twice, for instance) could themselves be banned from the country's pubs?

That was the article that I nearly wrote: furious at the bar owners who devise this kind of policy and at the workers who implement it; raging against the successive governments that have failed to put a stop to it; angry even at the Korean people who protested COVID travel bans imposed by other countries but who willingly turn a blind eye at home to entry restrictions of a different kind. If my editors allowed me, I was going to name and shame the specific bar which denied me entry; I was thinking about posting a video of the incident online, organizing a protest, railing, fighting.

That was the article I would have written. It would have been an angry piece, and not without reason. But I did know inside that I needed to calm down before I wrote anything and particularly before I published anything. There's enough hatred in the world and especially in the public sphere without more being added by me. I decided to take a week to calm down and reflect on the experience.

Living in Korea, I try to understand prevailing perspectives here, even if I don't necessarily adopt them myself. From hideously saccharine potato chips to the tendency to let the door slam into the face of the person behind, from the tacit understanding of subway etiquette to the right way to conduct yourself in the public baths ― I have sought to understand and adapt to Korean culture, even when it's hard.

What is easy, however, at least for a foreigner who speaks Korean, is noticing what some would call micro-aggressions, which occur if not on a daily then at least on a weekly basis. But we have to accept that this is Korea, not America and not Europe. Imposing Western frameworks of race and racism doesn't work here. Much of the oft-maligned Critical Race Theory is so fundamentally centered on the American experience that it just doesn't make sense in other parts of the world ― though it is true that scholars have been attempting to adapt its principles for other settings, including Korea.

Korea is not a Western country. It has a different history and a different relationship with outside cultures. And it has no inherent duty to become a multicultural society in the mode of Western Europe or North America.

So I have tried to accept that sometimes in Korea people talk about or treat foreigners in a way which would be considered unpalatable where I grew up. I seek gently to remind people who sneer at citizens of poorer countries that once Korea itself struggled with desperate poverty. To those who think all refugees should be spurned I try to point out that not so long ago those seeking refuge from war were in fact Koreans.

As a general rule, when people express xenophobic views, I try to understand, even if I disagree. Otherwise it would be nearly impossible to stay in Korea for any length of time. (The obverse of this ― which you can find online if you look ― is the spectacle of non-Koreans responding to Korean racism by expressing their own racism against Koreans. This is of course just as worthy of condemnation.)

But the "no foreigners allowed" rule is different. It's not a question of someone revealing an unrealized bias towards outsiders or an ignorant (in the purest sense of not knowing) attitude towards different cultures. No: it's a purely racist policy designed to exclude people based on the color of their skin. After all, the doorman announced that we were not allowed in before asking for any form of identification. And while I was remonstrating angrily at the door, a pair of men who looked East Asian were waved in without any form of ID check. Our skin was enough to prohibit our entry, just as their skin was enough to permit it.

This is worth getting angry about. It's not an awkward slip or an incautiously-expressed generalization. It is an explicitly racist policy, not an accident: someone actually sat down and made the decision that the bar's best approach would be to exclude outsiders.

Visitors here and foreign residents who cannot speak Korean may well be blissfully unaware of why they are sometimes turned away at the bar door. Perhaps it's full, they surmise; or I haven't matched the dress code. Maybe I need a ticket or something. And they wander off to another, less racist locale.

I wonder if this at least contributes to why bars can still get away with banning foreigners. It's harder to get mad if you're not sure whether you're being barred because of your skin or your shoes.

The question remains how to respond when you encounter this when you do understand. As for me, I'm not sure I reacted very well. I started to record the incident on my wife's phone and when one of the security people grabbed it, I wrenched the phone away and continued to point the camera and complain. I found to my disappointment later that he had pressed a button to stop the recording, meaning very little of the encounter was filmed.

With or without video evidence, I made a scene. I suddenly realized that I knew most of the correct vocabulary and grammar to shout loudly about racist entry policies for pubs, and so I set about doing so with gusto. My Korean teachers would have been proud.

This approach is certainly cathartic and it may have given the doormen something to think about, but it won't bring about long-term change. So the day afterwards we lodged a complaint with both the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) and the local council of the city where the incident took place.

Disappointingly, the city council very quickly replied saying that the pub's policy is not against the law and there's nothing that they can do. The NHRCK are still investigating; we have more hope there. I believe there is a precedent where a similar incident took place and the organization required the bar to change its policy. In any case, to anyone who experiences this kind of prejudice I would recommend reporting it to the NHRCK; they have complaint forms in 8 languages.

Whatever happens in my particular case, it's clear that Korea needs to have a more open discussion about the foreigners who live here, and it's equally important not to import the toxicity of American debates around race. Anger may be the natural reaction, but we rarely make good decisions when the red mist descends. While I as a foreigner can't change Korean law, I can start talking at least. And it's possible ― necessary ― to talk about these topics honestly and openly, and to do so without resorting to hatred.

**

Update May 18, 2023
Thanks to the intervention of the NHRCK, the pub has sent a written apology and a commitment not to let a similar incident happen again.

Dr. Scott Shepherd (scottshepherd@chongshin.ac.kr) is a British-American academic. He has taught in universities in the U.K. and Korea, and is currently an assistant professor of English at Chongshin University in Seoul. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.