The 35-year-old Filipino teacher and part-time actor has a fair share of bad experiences abroad
For many K-drama and -movie Filipino fans, Christian Lagahit is a familiar face. Starring in movies “Space Sweeper” and “The Negotiation,” as well as in a number of series including “Crash Landing On You,” “The King: Eternal Monarch,” “Itaewon Class,” “Her Private Life,” and “My ID Is Gangnam Beauty,” the 35-year-old Filipino teacher in South Korea is living the dream. And with his appearance in Netflix’s “Squid Game,” he is definitely living a dream life. But that is not always the case for overseas Filipinos, and Christian has had his fair share of less than desirable experiences abroad.
In a sit-down interview with “Asian Boss” host Tammy Lee Park, Christian recounted a time when he experienced discrimination in South Korea.
“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,” he said. “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,” he continued. “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.”
The part-time actor asked the woman who threw the cabbage why she did it, and another lady translated what the woman said saying, “She wants you to step out of the bus,” because he is not Korean, “and that bus was intended for Koreans.”
“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 ,” he said. “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.”
According to Christian, the lives of Players 276 and 199 (Ali Abdul) in “Squid Game” mirror what’s happening in real life. For foreign workers in Korea, “it’s more of like a survival,” as he describes, one must be brave or else he will lose. In the interview, he also mentioned that there are an estimated 46,000 Filipinos in South Korea, many are skilled workers, some are married to Korean people, and others are students and religious workers.
Watch the full interview here: