Chinese students in Korea fear for their safety following torch protests

John Kennedy at Global Voices Online has translated an interesting piece being circulated online (h/t to ESWN). An overseas Chinese student in Korea claims that Chinese people residing in and visiting the country are now potentially unsafe following last month's torch relay protests, which turned violent:

Near where we live there's this big lady who's always been really nice to me, stopping to ask how I've been whenever she sees me. I waved hi to her today, and then she suddenly turned her head in the opposite direction. Then later my roommate came home with red eyes and when I asked what was wrong, I found out that as she was taking the subway back, just translating some assignment work, the Korean male student sitting beside her saw her checking the Chinese, and immediately asked, "너 중국인요?" (are you Chinese?), and my friend asked, 'so what if I am?' He immediately replied, " 중국개새끼" (the Chinese are inbred dogs). My friend snapped right back, "너 개새끼잖아" (you, maybe), and didn't expect then that several Koreans standing nearby would suddenly rush over and surround her, saying all at once thing like, "they always say the Chinese people have terrible character, now today I sure enough see that it's true," until my friend had no choice but to run off as soon as the subway stopped, even though it wasn't her stop. Things like this have been happening a lot these past two days. I've been asking my friends, and most of them have more or less come across it, and now we don't dare go out alone, and don't dare come back too late. When we're alone we don't dare speak Chinese.

This video of Chinese protesters in Seoul beating Koreans has also been circulating online:

The full Global Voices post can be read here. It's well-worth a look.