Foreign Students Are Targets of Hate Speech  

Joon Baek, a Korean student at Columbia University in New York City, was riding the subway last year when a woman sitting across from him began to shout. In America’s largest city of nearly 8 million people, it is not unusual to hear someone ranting. 

“I was commuting from campus back to Korea Town where I live, and I tried not to say anything, to just look down, was just minding my own business,” Baek described. “But it got worse and worse, and it wasn’t just any kind of verbal assault. I realized it was actually directed at me.”  Baek said he was uncomfortable, given that anti-Asian hate crimes that have spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to police data.  He decided to get off at the next stop.