email from cam sylvester, old family friend and one of those community college instructors who teaches you more in 3 months than 8 lazy, tenured fruitcakes or 800 tense-as-shit UBC sessionals could have taught you in 2 years at UBC:


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Sean,
Sounds wild and wonderful. THe Koreans have chaebols, but they are
basically the same things as zaibatsu.

BTW, don't let your cultural sensitivity stop you if you
see something that goes against your inner core, like a guy beating up
his girlfriend. Even in a culturally relevant world you need to hold on
to what's true to you.
Cam

so yeah, it's the same thing as a zaibatsu. it seemed too similar to be anything but. and the real reason i didn't intervene was not the dong-dong-ju or beer making me lazy, it was the fact that there were 6 korean cops nearby who would likely have arrested me instead of the girl-beatin' asshole.