By Yoon Ja-young
A Filipino actor who played the role of a migrant worker in the popular Netflix series, “Squid Game,” talked on the popular YouTube channel, “Asian Boss,” about his experiences of discrimination in Korea.
In an interview with Youtube channel “Asian Boss,” Christian Lagahit, who appeared on the original Korean drama as “Player 276,” introduced himself as a marketing consultant and data analyst who works as a part-time actor here. He said that he came to Korea in 2015 at the suggestion of his mother, who was also working in the country. He started working here as an English teacher and also did part-time gigs as an actor in several films, including “Space Sweepers” and “The Negotiation.”
Asked whether he has had any experiences of being stereotyped in Korea, Lagahit said that it was closer to discrimination.
“I was inside the village bus (a direct English translation of the Korean word meaning a local public bus) … I was sitting at the back of the small bus which can only accommodate a few people to sit,” he began.
“There was this woman who was just staring at me. But at first, I didn’t pay attention. A few minutes passed by. I was just surprised when something hit my face. She threw a cabbage on my face.”
He said that he was wearing eyeglasses at the time, so the first thing he worried about was his eyeglasses, because he couldn’t see. When he picked them up, however, they were broken.
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| Christian Lagahit appears in “Squid Game” as “Player 276.” Screenshot from the “Asian Boss” YouTube channel |
He asked the woman, who seemed to be in her late 50s, why she had done that. One of the other bus passengers said that the woman wanted him to get off the bus because he was not Korean.
He said that he had felt like crying inside, adding that he just felt so bad that not a single person had tried to help him.
“Even when she was about to leave the bus the woman was still screaming ‘all foreigners here in Korea are bad people,” Lagahit said. He also mentioned another case in which people refused to sit beside him on the bus.
As he shared his experiences in the interview, some Koreans commented online that they felt sorry and ashamed, and that they wanted to apologize on the behalf of the woman on the bus. Some others, meanwhile, claimed that they could not imagine such an incident happening and wondered if the woman had a mental health problem.
