In a recent interview with media company Asian Boss, Filipino actor Christian Lagahit, who appeared in Squid Game, opened up about the stereotyping and discrimination he’s faced while living in South Korea. He played Player 276 in the hit Netflix show, which was shot and produced in South Korea.
Lagahit shared his “most memorable” experience during the interview. The incident happened one time when he was on a bus, and a middle-aged Korean lady apparently threw a cabbage to his face, breaking the glasses he was wearing. According to Lagahit, no one in the bus came to his aid.
Here are some lines from his interview:
The most memorable one was when I was inside the village bus. It was the last trip, and I was sitting at the back because it was very small. It can only accommodate a few people to sit, so other people were already standing in the bus.
There was this woman who was just staring at me. At first I wasn’t paying attention because I thought she was maybe looking at the boys, because there were boys in front of me. I thought that maybe she was just looking at the students. A few minutes passed by, and I was surprised when something hit my face. She threw a cabbage at my face—straight at my face.
I was wearing eyeglasses at that time, and the first thing that I looked for was my eyeglasses because I couldn’t see. So I looked for my eyeglasses, and when I picked my eyeglasses up, they were already broken. I kind of used the broken eyeglasses to see because I’m farsighted.
Then I asked, ‘I’m sorry, what’s happening here? Why did you throw this vegetable at me?‘ The hardest part was that no one was paying attention to me. There were a lot of people inside the bus. It was filled, but no one was there to at least help me.
According to the other lady, ‘She wants you to step out of the bus.’ Because I’m not Korean, and that bus was intended for Koreans—but there’s no such thing as a foreigner bus here in Korea. She said, ‘You just have to go out.’
And I was crying inside. For me, there was nothing I could do anymore. I couldn’t complain, but what I didn’t understand was there were other people inside that small bus. I just felt so bad that no one was ready to help.
Even when she was about to leave the bus, she was still screaming, ‘All foreigners here in Korea are bad people!‘ I remember those lines from her.
You can watch the interview through the video below. Head to the 24:18 mark.
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