Do you have issues with the police?

Did you or your friends get in trouble?

 

Assuming you’re a foreigner, if you or your friends run into trouble with the police (or any authorities), remember this:

 

CALL A LAWYER AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

 

Criminal cases usually start with the police,and while the Korean police are in general effective at maintaining public order, they are often terribly incompetent when dealing with foreigners. They don’t speak your language,and they do not understand how people from different cultural and societal backgrounds can have different viewpoints.

 

For example, a guy was accused of sexually harassing a lady in public transportation, police arrived, and he was surrounded by a bunch of people, all pointing fingers at him. The guy, not being able to speak Korean, cannot say anything to defend himself, and does not fully understand what is going on. He says, “I’m sorry,I don’t understand-”, and as soon as he says that, the police think, “Oh,this guy is saying he’s sorry, he must be guilty”, and arrests the guy.

 

You may think this is funny, but sadly, I am speaking from experience. This kind of stuff happens, and the guy was detained for months until he was found to be not guilty.

 

I’ll give you another example. A guy is stopped by the police,and they ask him to blow on an alcohol test machine. Not only does he not understand Korean, he is from a country where alcohol is prohibited by law, and therefore doesn’t know what the machine is,much less what to do with it. The police call a translator,but the translator does not really speak his language (the police translators are often atrociously incompetent. The translators in our legal system rarely have any professional qualification to be a translator), and instead of telling him to blow on the machine, tells him to “breathe in”. He follows the instructions as he understands them,and the police for some reason gets angry at him,and acts in a threatening manner (since they think that the guy is not following the instructions on purpose). In the end, he ends up getting fined a huge amount of money for refusal of alcohol test,loses his driver’s license, and almost loses his visa.

 

These sorts of absurdities happen more often than you think. If these people contacted a lawyer before the situation escalated,they could’ve avoided the trouble. Do not think that the police will see reason. You’d be lucky if they even understand your point of view. That is why foreigners need lawyers,much more than a Korean person would in the same situation.