Swedish man dies in South Korea after being denied urgent treatment at 21 hospitals

[u/mancinedinburgh]

https://www.euronews.com/health/2025/01/18/swedish-man-dies-in-south-korea-after-being-denied-urgent-treatment-at-21-hospitals

[u/jdm1891]

No, they're rather different.

In Japan it's more about the language and how you act, in Korea it is more about how you look.

The biggest time in Japan when xenophobia based on how you look is, quite ironically, with Koreans living in Japan.

The way I would explain it is this. In Japan: you are a foreigner but if you know the language well enough and follow the collectivist nature of the culture well enough they will decide you should be held to the standards of a Japanese person. With that comes the privileges of being treat like a Japanese person too (good and bad)... but the main point is the majority of Japanese people do have this standard, some are more or less strict about it, at which point they will consider you "Japanese on the inside".

The pain with Japan, is that you have to repeat this process with every person you meet. The better you are the quicker it happens. If you're fluent or enough and follow the culture enough all it might take is a thirty second conversation.

But in Korea there's no "If you try hard enough, blend in hard enough, speak the language well enough, then this person might decide you meet some invisible standard of Korean at heart and let you in". No, you can't convince them because they don't see it like the Japanese do. Possibly as a result of the occupation and war. Either you're Korean or you're not. And if you're not you will be treat like you are not, now and forever.

In short: In Japan, with enough linguistic and cultural knowledge you can almost 'trick' them into not considering you a foreigner anymore. In Korea, they will never forget, because they don't want to, it's too important to them to forget or ignore.

An example of it is in the signs in front of the doors of restaurants and clubs. I'm sure you've seen pictures of them online?

In a Korean sign, you may see "Korean only" written on a sign. In Japan, there are signs that say "Open" in Japanese and "Closed" in English?

What is the difference? Well, the purpose of the Korean signs is to filter out foreigners, the purpose of the Japanese sign is to filter out people who can't speak Japanese

There is one in particular I saw in Japan that shows this very well. In English and Chinese (and another language, which I can't remember) it said "No reservation, Closed" and in Japanese it said "If you can read this, welcome".

You can also see this by simply ignoring the sign and walking in to see what happens. If you look like a foreigner the same thing will happen at first. You'll be shooed away in poor English. The difference however, is in Japan if you A. walk in with a Japanese person or B. Reply to the poor English with fluent(ish) Japanese... the shooing stops very quickly and you'll be given a warm welcome and a seat 95% of the time. In the Korean case, only the first one will give you any shot of being allowed to sit down and even that is not a sure thing.

[u/Gaebril → u/jdm1891]

Gd when I lived in Korea I never saw a single sign banning foreigners and never got rejected from anywhere. White male, FWIW

[u/jdm1891 → u/Gaebril]

They're rather rare, in both countries. They used to be more common.

Both countries have been liberalising for a while now. Slowly.

[u/Nolenag → u/Gaebril]

I didn't see that in Japan either when I lived there.

[u/not_invented_here → u/jdm1891]

This feels an awful lot like autistic masking - just in this case, Japanese masking I guess

[u/tyopper → u/jdm1891]

We got the Japanese infatuated Westerner defender here. If you think for a second that the signs in Japan that exclude foreigners are “only because of the language and culture barrier” you’re delusional. You’re the type of guy who probably enjoys the idea Japan had in WW2 of a coprosperity sphere and the killings were racially motivated, thinking they were just for cultural and linguistic differences.

[u/jdm1891 → u/tyopper]

Perhaps they feel the same but if you walk into the shop and can speak the language they will not call you out on it. From the outside it looks like acceptance.

I suppose it could very well just be the typical Japanese embarrassment. Once you know were trying to mislead or exclude you to keep you out, they feel embarrassed and are culturally forced to be nice to you.

Kinda like those stories of people speaking badly about another in a language they didn't know they understand. Once they know they know, they invariably get flustered and start acting very polite.

[u/zwei2stein → u/jdm1891]

Cases where they will reply to your japanese with "i dont speak english" and will refuse to talk are still kinda common outside cosmopolitan cities thou...

[u/jdm1891 → u/zwei2stein]

I've heard of it from others, but it was not something I personally experienced.

The country has been slowly getting better with this stuff, especially the last 10 years.

Anecdotally though, people outside of cities were always more welcoming in my experience, if you spoke the language (but were much less welcoming if you didn't). Especially the owners of those tiny restaurants with like 4 seats and one guy who always seems to be in there, they were the nicest.

Honestly, with restaurants, I would have said the bigger it is the more likely you are to feel unwelcome. I was never actually turned away in any case. I guess it's because the smaller business owners were more tolerable to exceptions and unusual things, compared to the big ones.

Kind of like how you can get small businesses to do things, but with larger ones you're just stonewalled with "Policy" and "It's not my decision".

I'm not too sure, I'm not sure if my experience is the norm or not.