Korean tourists claim they were treated rudely while here on holiday
A mother and daughter from South Korea have claimed they were mistreated by a Singaporean woman at a Covid-19 screening facility during their recent trip to Singapore.
In a YouYube video posted on Dec 19, the pair said the unpleasant encounter occurred on the day they completed their quarantine, when they were queueing for a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test at a hospital.
The daughter, known only as Bunny, said in the video that they did not make an appointment for the test, and had to queue for over two hours.
When she left her mum in the queue to go somewhere else to fill in their personal details, she noticed there was a commotion in the queueing area involving her mother.
Bunny's mum said she told a young woman that she would leave the queue for a moment, and asked the woman to help keep her place. According to Bunny, her mum left the queue to sit down for a bit, because her legs ached.
When her mum returned to the queue, the woman claimed she never saw the elderly woman. She even called the staff over to tell them Bunny's mum was cutting in line.
Bunny claimed that the woman was a Singaporean, though both she and her mum did not mention how they came to know of the woman's citizenship.
Bunny's mum also alleged she was pushed and tugged at, and the people there wanted her to go to the back of the line to queue all over again. The mum said she felt embarrassed as she was treated like a liar.
Fortunately, Bunny stepped in to help her mum explain the situation to a worker in Mandarin, and they were both told to go to the front of the line after clearing the air.
"If I didn't know Mandarin, we would have to queue again for two hours, just because of that woman," Bunny said.
As they were walking to the front of the queue, they said some others stared at them and seemed to be scolding them in Mandarin while gesturing at them with their fingers.
"How would (those people) feel if they were scolded in South Korea and were scolded in Korean?" Bunny added.
Bunny's mum exclaimed: "How can they do this, how can they be so cold-blooded to foreigners?"
Bunny said such a thing would not have happened in Taiwan, and that people in Taiwan were willing to hear her out and help her whenever she needed assistance.
"(I) can't understand why (the woman) could be so unkind… If the locals treat us like this, who would want to come to Singapore?" she added.
According to Bunny, their trip to Singapore was to celebrate her mum's birthday, but the unpleasant encounter left them shocked and angry. She said her mum cried and stayed in their hotel room for the entire day after the encounter.
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