 It's so hard to be here. And amazing at the same time. Hello. You're very good. Hello. Hello. That's so cute. And then when you say how are you, you say Likai. Likai, Likai. And then they will say Retei, Matei. Welcome to J.K.I.M. channel. And here is... Alessandro. The listen that I invite her today is... Alessandro. Black people experience in Korea. Okay, so... Again. So today I'm gonna ask her some questions about experience in Korea as a black woman. Yay. Alessa. Alessa. And it's flower. Flower? Oh my God. It's so sweet for you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so can you introduce yourself, Palessa? Okay guys, so my name is Palessa and my family name is Muchele. I am from South Africa from a very, very small province called Freestate. So yeah, I'm originally from Freestate and then obviously I went to work in Johannesburg. And I'm currently a sanghi, a teacher in Korea. Well, I do many things in Korea but yeah, the main thing is to be a teacher. So when did you come to Korea? I came to Korea last year, February, on the 28th. So that means you have already many experiences in Korea. I have a lot of experiences, a lot. I'm so curious. I can't wait to ask you. Many. Wow, okay. Let's go to the main topic. What kind of stereotypes do Koreans have about black people? I think Koreans have a lot of stereotypes about black people. I think they expect you to act a certain way. I can make example about at my workplace, right? So situations would happen and sometimes I'm a very confrontational person. Like if something is wrong, I won't ask you no more very nicely. I'll be like, oh, you know, this happened. So I just wanted to understand, you know, and I found that a Korean way of doing things is to pretend like they didn't happen, like to not confront the situation. So if I don't confront it, I go home and it sort of like disturbs my mood. So I want to confront it. So one time I confronted my colleague about something that happened and she was like, wow, her friend actually told her that black people are quite aggressive. Really? Yeah, and I was like, oh my gosh, am I aggressive? And she was like, yeah, they told me you guys are very confrontational. And I was like, no, we actually quite different. You get shy ones, you get talkative ones. So, yeah. It's cheerful, not aggressive. It's cheerful, yeah, yeah, we cheerful guys. We're not aggressive. Oh, that's so rude. It's very rude. Can you tell me more about your experience that you have discriminated in Korea? Well, I wouldn't call it discrimination, so to say. Judgment? Judgment, there's a lot of things. You know, one thing that I've done since I've been to Korea is to try and understand that as people we're different, right? So we perceive things differently. What I might perceive as offensive and discriminative, it might not be on your side. So sometimes people, especially in a small time where I come from, some people have never actually never met a black person. So sometimes they will look at you in a certain way, not because they're trying to be rude, but because they've actually never met a black person before. And some of them will want to take pictures and some of them will, yeah. And some of them will actually ask you questions like, do you know this? And some of them, some of the things I actually don't know, like, do you live with a lion in your yard? And I'm like, no, I've actually never seen a lion in my own two eyes. I'm serious too. Yeah, and they're like, do you have a lion in your yard? I'm like, no, I don't live with lions. So you- I'm not a tiger. I wish I had a tiger. But yeah, so it's not, I wouldn't say it's discriminative. But you do get instances where there's such a- Misunderstanding. Misunderstandings. And you find places that actually they will know, inviting like foreigners into the, like clubs and certain places they know themselves. I would mention. Barrito, I don't know. Yeah, no, you do find places though, where if you're foreigner, if you're foreigner, they don't allow you to come in. So we'll use a different excuse obviously and say, we are full, we have no tables. But of course we do, I don't know the reason. What is this? This is moving. So when I first came to Korea, I had like very, it was pretty long. It was similar to this, but it was very, very long. I've got a lot of stairs. Like a lot of people are like looking at me, staring me down, taking pictures while I'm not watching. I don't know if people actually know, like phones in Korea. They actually have a click sound when you take a picture. So sometimes you will hear like clicks of people actually taking pictures of your hair. And it's very uncomfortable sometimes. I feel like it's very, very uncomfortable to hear someone taking a picture. It's very, it would be nice to say, how can I take a picture? And don't touch my hair. Okay, I will not touch. Don't touch my hair. Okay, so next question is, can you tell me about some experience that you have or your friends have in Korea? How is dating Korean guys? I will start with the good, right? Korean guys are quite amazing guys. If you want someone who's very affectionate, who's gonna check up on you every now and then, who's gonna ask you, are you okay? Are you hungry? And all these things, they're quite good on that. So they actually make really good boyfriends. And they do quite a lot of like cute stuff for you. Little bayous, like even small things, flowers and all of that. But with everything, there's also like a bad side of things, which is not all Korean guys, some of them. You do find a whole lot of amazing ones, but some of them, okay? So number one, they will ghost you. So ghosting is you meet someone today and whatever happens, and then you'll never hear from them ever again. Or you'll hear from them when they need whatever they need from you, whether they want to sit for coffee or what. Yeah. And some of them, they don't want to be seen sometimes, walking around with like their girlfriends, especially during the day. I don't know whether they don't want to be judged, but it doesn't happen quite a lot. It does happen, but not a lot. Frozen cards, yeah. Frozen cards. And it's not all of them. There are ones that will walk down the street holding your hands, so it's not everyone. People are different guys. Oh yeah, be careful. Be careful. Guys are for animals. No, exactly. It's not a Korean thing. Every guy can ghost you, actually. I love modern family. Gloria Santa. Oh, mental animal. Exactly. I want to talk about the beauty standards. Korean beauty standards make black women harder? I think for me, I will talk about my own experiences. Since I've been in Korea, I've found that I'm very conscious about myself, wearing makeup almost every single day. My weight, because everybody around me is skinny, so I'm always constantly worried about gaining weight and not actually understanding that our genes are different. Asians are skinny, they're very skinny, and we are like, you know, so you need to work extra hard to be skinny. So it's just constantly, I mean, even if you go to work without makeup, there's certain people that will ask if you're okay. And you're just like, yeah, I'm okay, I'm just not wearing makeup. And the treatment is also different. Like when you're wearing makeup, they treat you like you're so important, like you have something important to say. When you don't have makeup, oh my gosh, it's like you're not even there. So yeah, they're quite high because every single person that you meet, they look good. Koreans look amazing, guys. They're beautiful all the time, makeup all the time, skinny all the time. I just don't know how they do it. Like, honestly, I don't know how they do it. Yeah, they care about their appearance a lot. Exactly, like, oh my gosh, it's so hard. Everywhere there's a mirror. Exactly, even at work, I'm just like, what are these mirrors doing at school? Even they bring the mirrors in their bed. Exactly, even if they don't have the mirrors, they will use their phones, like they're always doing this. And I'm just like, oh my word, I can't. Oh, that's true, that's so true. Yeah, I think I should talk about this the next day, another topic. You should, it's so hard to be here and amazing at the same time. We didn't, we're not shooting. So we moved here because the lightsabration was gone, the time was gone, so okay, I can't sure we can use this place or not, but we were using, so yeah. We're basically stealing the time in this room, so I'm very nervous, but we're doing this. Okay, let's just do it quick. Okay. Okay, so next question is, I'm really curious about that. Do you think African black people are treated differently compared to American black people? In Korea? I think not all the time, but it definitely does happen because especially when it comes to teaching, right? I feel like they do prefer Americans over South Africans, especially because it has to do with pronunciation because obviously we do pronounce things differently. South Africans use the British English and obviously they do prefer the American English. So that's where it comes in and in most instances, sometimes when you meet people, they will automatically think that you are American. Well, it happens to me quite a lot, especially by Koreans. I mean, for me, when I see another black person, I can definitely tell when they are South African or not. But when it's a Korean, sometimes they can really differentiate and when they find that you're from South Africa, I tell you, you get a totally different reaction. I don't know how to put it, but it's not as when they received you the first time knowing that you're from America, the minute you're like, I'm from South Africa, it's like, okay. And then America is like, wow, really? Oh, really? Yeah. South Africa. Everyone's thinking... World Cup? Everyone in Korea asks me about Mandela. Mandela died. Oh, he died. He died, guys. He died, okay? So we don't have lions. Mandela died. Sokka, World Cup was in 2010. Okay, so we talked about the experience as a black girl in Korea. And it was really glad to listen to your experience. It was really interesting. And I hope maybe it can be helpful to you if you want to come to Korea or something. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much, guys. Thank you. And she have our own YouTube channel. It's a really interesting tip, so... I'm not really consistent, but you can check it out, okay? Okay, so it was good to see you today. Thank you. Thank you for meeting me. Maybe we can meet another time. Oh, definitely. I will be back. Bye, bye, bye. Bye, guys. Thank you for watching. How to say bye-bye in... Little salante. Little salante.