Media Missionary Focus

Hostages and Revenge and Ugly Foreigners

By now the hostage crises in Seam Reip in Cambodia has been on most of the news networks. The details, however, have only now been coming out.

A few days before, a Korean restaurant owner had had an argument with a former security guard who was working for him as a driver. It isn’t clear what the reason for the argument was, but what is clear is that the Korean business owner slapped the 22 year old guard twice. This is a HUGE insult in most Asian countries, including Cambodia.

The guard was so angry and insulted that he decided to act in retaliation. He traveled 4 hours to Phnom Penh to buy a gun, and then returned to Seam Reip. He enlisted two friends, also former security guards, to help him. His plan is to take out his anger on the children of the Korean restaurant owner. His job had been to drive the children to, and from school each day, so he and his two accomplices went to the school with the intent of killing the two children. Unfortunately, the class they took over did not contain the two children they were looking for, so they began to improvise. The demanded money, guns and a van from the government, and to prove they were serious they killed a 4 year old Canadian boy who happened to be crying. During their attempted escape they were overpowered by local police and the entire drama came to end with a crowd of locals beating the kidnappers to a point where they appeared to be dead (although they all lived and are now in police custody).

There are three things I would like to point out from this event to help you understand the current conditions in Cambodia.

First of all is the Cambodian concept of “kum.” The closest English translation of this word is revenge, but that just doesn’t capture it completely. It is revenge multiplied exponentially, buried beneath the surface, and released at a time when it is least expected. Chances are that when the main kidnapper was slapped by the Korean restaurant owner, he probably meekly submitted and went away quietly. That is kind of the way most things like this start out. The anger, rage and desire for revenge is there, but they don’t let you see it. Then, later, when you aren’t expecting it, they come back and exact retribution.

The second thing is the slap by the Korean restaurant owner. Cambodia has many foreigners working here in all types of trades, and many have very poor cross cultural skills. In one sense, I am shocked someone could be so completely clueless as to slap an employee like that. But on the other hand, that is pretty Korean; they tend to be very class conscious and very blunt in the way they deal with things. But it’s not just Koreans, there are many foreigners who give foreigners a bad name here (including lots of “ugly Americans”.

The third thing is the crowd’s reaction in beating the kidnappers. There is a general undercurrent of frustration here with the police and justice system (and really with the government in general), and it is very common for crowds who catch any kind of criminal to enforce a kind of mob justice.

All of these observations seem trivial, however, when compared to the loss of life that it all resulted in; a 4 year old Canadian boy who had nothing to do with any of it, but was just upset enough to cry.

posted by Troy In Cambodia @ 11:43 PM