Don't Be a Menace to South Korea...while drinking your Soju in the hood?

Excuse my incredibly tacky title....I couldn't help myself. If you're unaware, "Don't Be a Menace to South Central, While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood" is a really terrible movie about the violence on the south side. The end.

When people started to get wind of my traveling to Korea, a lot of people voiced their concerns for my safety. Like my first post mentions, getting abducted into a windowless van to be sold into sex slavery was definitely on the table. Well, let's set the record straight, shall we?

I'm dumbfounded at the utter lack of crime in Korea. If getting punched in a drunken bar fight is the most common crime in this country, I think they deserve some sort of award/ribbon/something dipped in bronze.

Students carry exacto knives in their pencil cases. When I saw a student take hers out, I almost fainted. When she explained to me that most students carry them, and THEN saw alllll of the students take theirs out....well its an image I'll likely soon not forget. However, it did make me realize that not everyone looks at a sharp object and thinks brutal massacre. Korean students use these knives on the daily, instead of scissors. I'm warming up the best I can.

One of my western friends has even lost his wallet TWICE in downtown Seoul (much much bigger than Chicago) and each time, his wallet was mailed back to him, money/credit cards intact. Complete strangers are more inclined to go out of their way to return your belongings than use them for their own good. Koreans take such pride in what they have and who they represent, that tipping a taxi driver 10 cents or 10 dollars will piss him off. In a lot of ways, living amongst Koreans makes me feel like I was living amongst heathens in midwest America.

Even the birds are friendly!.....in the amusement park anyways.

Car theft, house burglaries, purse snatching, homicide, the works....these crimes are so few that I get laughed at by other Koreans when I talk about being scared to take the subway at night. The most crime I've seen is probably two Aussie bros getting into an argument over so and so's girlfriend at a bar.

I am not saying, however, that nothing bad goes down in SK. There is a lot of identity theft from what I hear. Also petty crimes, like pick-pocketing still happen in touristy areas. But I think most cities have the same problem.

So, in my opinion. South Korea= 1 USA= -100 in the crime department.

Just giving my insights...

Cheers