A jet ski rider who has been detained since he washed up on South Korea’s coast is believed to be a Chinese dissident who feared for his safety and fled by crossing hundreds of miles of sea, trailing barrels of fuel behind him.
The coast guard in the western South Korean port city of Incheon said in a statement Sunday that a Chinese man in his 30s tried to illegally enter the country Aug. 16 by riding a jet ski from the Shandong area of China, an eastern province around 200 miles away across the Yellow Sea.
There’s 2 parts to that comment. Percentage of population with a passport, and number of people who can’t afford it. I wasn’t debating the 2nd one, though I probably have quite a few things I could say on that point.
The first point however, relates to the practically-a-meme about how many Americans have no interest in ever leaving the states even for a brief holiday, whether or not they can afford it.
There’s no point in getting a passport when you know you’re too broke to afford a plane ticket my dude. The two issues are heavily correlated.