OT: Korean Ferry disaster

[kato13]

To a degree I may have "poisoned" my gf with Western thinking.

One of the stories that I tell when comparing Asian to Western ways of looking at things is in regards to how the Japanese and Americans responded to the same situation during an earthquake.

When dealing with a collapsed wall that needed to be shifted to allow people to escape from under it the solutions were as follows.

Japanese Solution (it was a while since i heard it so there may be more steps)

• The block emergency manager assesses the need for inflatable lifting bag to move the wall.
• The request is routed to the district equipment manager who puts in a request to the regional depot.
• The regional depot dispatches the equipment and the team trained to use it.

American solution

• Break into the trunks of nearby cars and use the jacks to lift the wall.

I am not saying Asian culture is worse but it is definitely less flexible in certain situations. She looks at the failure of her people to rescue so many children and wonders if her government is telling the whole truth or trying to shift the blame onto one person because they don't want to admit mistakes or even that they may have been hindered by a lack of flexibility.

In Asia lies with a purpose are often not seen as lies. The fact that she is an Korean/English translator has exposed her to the Western world's more rigid interpretation of a lie, and she is not buying all of what they are telling her.

She has already found inconsistencies as to when the rescue center first told the ship to have everyone put on life jackets when comparing the Korean and English transcripts.

I know first information is fluid and translations of garbled transmissions are not the best thing to base a conclusion on, but her country has had a history of covering up things that embarrass the government.

To an outsider it might appear I am throwing Asian culture under the bus, so I will end with some stories of how wonderful the Korean culture is in terms of trusting each other.

A few tidbits.

When riding a rollercoaser people put their personal belongings into a big bin. You root through the bin after the ride is over and take your stuff. I was reluctant to put my 5 dollar hat in the bin and my gf put her purse with her passport in it.

In an apartment parking lot where space was at a premium, people left their cars in neutral if they were blocking another space. People would just push the cars around to get out. My friends and I were pretty good teenagers but when I mentioned this at a gathering we all said we would have done something untoward if someone did that when we were in highschool.

Gas masks, food, flashlights, and medical kits are in unlocked lockers all over Seoul. I told my gf if they tried that in the US, 20 minutes after they were stocked, people would be selling them on the street.