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Video of migrant worker tied to forklift sparks outrage in South Korea
(www.straitstimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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I don't know cross-cultural things and I'm really not trying to be insensitive, but in the US this is just a construction worker / factory worker type thing. It is irrespective of nationality (more likely to happen if they generally like the person being hazed or joked around with) and no hatred is intended.
A friend of mine worked with a guy that would sneak up behind new guys and hit them in the ass with a folding-out staple gun so they would get stapled. It's not right, my friend heard of this and went to the guy and told him that if he attempted it they were definitely going to get in a fistfight. I'm not saying it is right. But I'm saying it is "normal" at least in US working person culture.
Every single "hazing" ritual tends to be specially harsh towards members of less protected groups.
Probably not so innocent
I mean if he got ass-stapled he also probably would have experienced trauma also. I'm not trying to paint it as necessarily light hearted or okay... honestly, it's just too hard for me to say much of anything without knowing anything other than this video. I'm just saying that my first read filtering the video through my US lens is "yeah they're fucking around."
My first thought was "๐๐ toxic masculinity".
Thank goodness no US factory I have worked for would tolerate this kind of crap. Hazing at best, absolutely a lawsuit waiting to happen.
This has been used to justify every egregious behaviour by boorish groups throughout history.
Don't normalize cruelty. Don't be that guy.
I have no idea without seeing the context or knowing a hell of a lot more than seeing just this video. For all I know you are right, and this is "boys will be boys" type of thing that should get dealt with as the crime that it is, alongside fraternity hazing and date rape. That's actually why I brought up a specific example that was, objectively, abusive and wrong, so that I could make the point that I wasn't trying to excuse it necessarily.
All I was saying is that, right or wrong, this looks super common to me in US factory-worker culture and I was trying to sort out how that related to it being treated as a unique and un-heard of crisis in the OP article, that's all.
WTF