A man asked me out to dinner, then sent me a message demanding $75.

It’s incredible how you’re not seeing the correlation. You’re reveling in being deemed special by a scrote who finds the women of his culture lacking (or so he says), because they are required and socialized to conform to the rigid confines of their culture by patriarchy.

So he goes for the more exotic bird- a slightly westernized version of the women in his culture. This makes him feel cool, enlightened, cultured, successful. But he will also punish you for being a 'loose, westernized, feminist'. He will punish you for your American mores by not observing the conventions of Korean culture he thinks benefit you.

You’re upset (and you should), because his lack of observance shows he doesn’t really respect you. And can now openly flout cultural norms in a way that is considered uncouth, because you aren’t really one of them. Not in a way that counts. You’re being seen as wild. This is the double edged sword of being “othered” or being the Cool Girl to men.

And this is probably why he expected her to pay. I doubt he would have sent that message to a traditional Korean woman.

Wouldn’t describe this as a racism though.

The sad truth is, avoiding the dine-and-dash type is impossible if they do a good job of coming across as trustworthy.....leading up to when it's time to pay. It's frightening to know this and to know that unless the guy does something to give away his evil intentions, it's literally impossible to ascertain whether he'll be a gentleman or not.

The only way to avoid such men would be to watch out for anything funny/that doesn't add up and proceed to dump the guy immediately. For example, a man that tells you that he couldn't hang out with you but yet you see him posing with his friends for a picture, at a concert on Instagram, is a guy that can't be trusted and the type who can dine and dash. Basically, we can only avoid such men if they demonstrate, at any point, that they can't be trusted.

I wish I could provide a solution to this very real problem but I can't.

Just because people are reserved doesn’t mean they have no personality. Interpreting it as such while doing so in conjunction with the generalisation of the entire population of local women is pretty much textbook racism :/ Let’s give these Eurocentric ideas of extroversion as the be all end all of “personality” a rest. It’s giving Harvard discriminating against Asians by lowering their personality test scores.

I'm asking OP if it's part of the culture to be more reserved and less emotive or whatever in public - I don't know, never been there. I am definitely not saying that they have less personality. As an introvert myself I'd be offended if an extrovert told me I had less personality than them. I'm just more careful about who and where I show my personality to. That's just my personal anecdote though.

So you would rather ruin your life with a felony criminal record, spend time in jail, ruin your chances of ever being hired by a company again, not being able to get a college education, and spend 10s of thousands in legal fees, all over a dinner? Uuuuumm K.

Yes.