A Russian professor at SNU apparently had a bad experience with a student possibly trying to hit on her that led to her writing an open letter that has gone viral on Korean social media:
Olga Fedorenko
A female foreign professor at Seoul National University wrote an open letter to a man on campus who allegedly accosted her last month and became hostile after she refused to help him pronounce the word “coincidence.”
Olga Fedorenko, an assistant professor at the Department of Anthropology, whose nationality is Russian, wrote in a 1,402-word open letter that she was walking alone on a “dark, isolated street” at the school in Gwanak District, southwestern Seoul, at 9 p.m. on Oct. 5, when a man approached her, held out his cell phone and asked her how to pronounce the English word.
“I wondered if it was a really awkward pickup line,” Fedorenko recalled.
“I told you that I don’t want to talk to you. It was a weird request, the street was poorly illuminated, and there was no one around.”
When she turned to walk away, the man allegedly began to shout at her and use “aggressive” body language, evidently because she had used the word “weird.”
Fedorenko reportedly called security and walked to a main street, but the young man followed, lurking behind her and swearing in Korean, until three Korean women approached to help and try to reason with him.
“I was astonished to hear that this whole situation was actually my fault,” wrote the professor. “I apparently embarrassed you by refusing to engage with you.”
She also wrote, “To my utter disbelief, I think the three women even apologized to you on my behalf.”
According to the letter, the altercation came to an end when a security guard appeared, at which point the man claimed he was a computer science student at the school.
Fedorenko wrote that the security guard walked her home because she feared the man would follow her and take revenge for his “embarrassment.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but I have been accosted before in Korea by a crazy guy outside of Jongmyo of all places that the security guard at the entrance to the shrine had to intervene to get the guy off of me. I think if you live in Korea long enough as a foreigner you are bound to have somebody crazy eventually bother you at some point because of how much we stand out. Considering how Ms. Fedorenko is a good looking female professor at SNU she probably has to deal with more than her fair share of crazy people as this incident demonstrates.
