A while back, I wrote on the trash problem here in Korea. At the time, I was told that its is mostly middle-school and high-school students who leave the majority of trash. I wish that were true. It’s simply not and I suspect those that told me that lie wished to deflect the truth away from the real truth: Koreans just have little respect for their environment outside of their own home.

I went to the park last night and saw a group of adults and children at one of the picnic tables. The children crowded all around my dog, yelling and throwing snacks at her. She didn’t want any of them and left them on the ground. One of the mothers came up and scolded the children but not for littering, but for yelling at the dog. She picked up the snacks and just threw them in another direction. Meanwhile, the kids, each with their own pack of snacks and small bottle of juice, had left the wrappers and bottles on the ground. She got nasty when I mentioned the kids were leaving their messes on the ground while there was a trash bag not ten meters away. This morning, I went out to the park again and the same table was filled with trash, the same snack wrappers and bottles from the kids on the ground, the same things that littered the table with the adults last night was still there this morning. Almost every morning, now that the weather has changed from the hot and humid, I come out to the park to be greeted by piles of trash and litter from the previous night’s impromptu picnics.

As I walked back to my house from the park, a man on a scooter went by. As he passed each building, he threw stacks of business cards on the ground. I looked up the street and it was full of the brightly colored cards he was throwing. That’s just a form of Korean advertising, so I guess he’s excused from any littering charges.

I’ve tip-toed around the issue for this long, but my patience with their filth is wearing on me and I’m beginning to despise their lack of respect for their own city. I may not have a crying Indian to wield, but I’ll come up with something that takes this battle to the source.