Korean Traffic Pandemonium

I’m certainly not the world’s best driver. In my first few teenaged years of licensed-driving, I crashed the front of my car (well, the car my parents let me drive) into a brick flowerbed on a rainy slippery afternoon; backed the old thing into massive trash receptors denting my trunk; and pulled out in front of a friend’s mom’s van the afternoon of junior year prom, forever sealing the driver’s side door, forcing window-climb entries a la The General Lee from ‘The Dukes of Hazzard.’

However, in my 12 years or so of driving, I’ve not hit, smashed, slid, hydroplaned, fender-bendered, or even bumper-tapped anything since that wayward junior prom afternoon. This dramatic drop in minor accidents can be attributed almost exclusively to the fact that I stopped driving much past my high school days.

Eleven months ago, however, after living on Jeju Island for a year, I bought an old, beaten, scuffed-up, gas-guzzling car from another foreigner. And while I cannot say that I drive the beast regularly (as I also own and drive a small 125cc motorbike, which is better for gas, money, convenience, and anxiety), I can say, that when I drive, I am regularly stressed, irritated, fist-clinched and spouting a variety of cleverly-phrased (or I think so, at least) curse words!

There are various reasons attributing to Korea’s chaotic driving culture; for example, its relative short history. Cars were not a family staple in Korea until about 20 years ago. Now, every family has at least one car, and at least one driver, possibly self-taught, and almost certainly not a product of heavy childhood car-culture like that found in the West. Korean adults today didn’t grow up climbing in and out of cars, like most Westerners. My grandparents knew how to drive, and so taught my parents, and so taught me. I had 2 generations of driving-knowledge passed down to me in my youth, whereas many of the adults driving in Korea today possibly had no car experience before they began driving.

Furthermore, and possibly also because of its brief history, driving common sense is that of fiction here in Korea. I imagine that most Koreans were taught to drive with one hand so as to keep their other hand free for phone duty. I’ve seen a woman with her baby on her lap, driving her car at night, dome light on so she can see the lip liner she’s applying, with her cell phone wedged in between her shoulder and ear. Not only is it still legal to talk on your phone while driving, the Korean government just passed a law maintaining the rights of taxi drivers to keep satellite TVs on their dashboards, so as to keep the taxi drivers entertained when without a fare, despite a few crash-related deaths due to distracted, ‘entertained’ taxi drivers.

‘Blind spots’ has no translation in Korean (at least that I know of), as driving instructors have no lectures on the subject. It is common to drive in Korea and have the car in front of you completely cut you off, for if they cannot see you in their mirror, you do not exist! A friend of mine relayed a story about a young Korean woman, riding in the passenger seat of a Westerner’s car. My friend was sitting in the backseat, and as the Western-driver, when changing lanes, kept checking her blind spot for approaching cars, the Korean woman also turned around, with a very confused look on her face. When my friend and the Korean woman were alone, the Korean woman confided her confused question, “Your friend is a good driver, but why does she keep turning around all the time? What is she looking for? She should keep her eyes on the road in front of her.”

In Korea, it is perfectly normal to park your car, on a main street, if you need to run into a shop, a bank, or your home (and nap for hours). It seems that if one puts hazard indicators on, it’s no hold’s bar on any parking and driving laws one may violate. Within my very first hours of arriving to Korea, a Korean co-worker picked me up from the airport, and drove me into Seoul. When we missed our exit on the massive interstate, he simply slowed the car a little, pushed on his indicators, and reversed from 60kph on the interstate to make it back to our exit.

To further compound this young, uninformed driving culture, there is a complete lack of law enforcement where common (though serious) driving violations are concerned. When traffic laws like running red lights, parking on busy main streets, pulling out across three lanes of traffic to turn, u-turning on main roads into on-coming traffic, (the chaotic list could continue forever, I fear) are infringed and the local police happen to be there, they do nothing. A friend of mine, while sitting at a long, quiet red light, checked both directions of traffic and slowly pulled through the light, only to realize that she’d not checked the car next to her before doing so. When the cops watched as she ran the red light, they whooped the siren for a moment, and then remained stopped at the red light, as she slowly drove away.

A young driving culture and a lack of law-enforcement can account for a certain degree of the Korean traffic pandemonium, but something must be said for the uncanny similarities between their driving and the way Koreans walk, line-up, and organize themselves in open spaces. In the same way that it is not rude in this culture for an adjuma (an older woman) to bump into your back, elbow your side, groan ‘Bali Bali’ (Faster!) at you then speed past you as you try to enter the front doors at Lotte Mart (Korea’s Target), so too is it socially acceptable to side swipe someone’s parked car, knocking their side mirror off, and scuffing their doors then simply drive away, guilt-free.

Korea’s most effective driving/parking solution to the seemingly unsolvable chaos, is that of posting a telephone number on the dashboard of all cars. Since the police rarely ticket illegally parked cars, and tow-trucks cannot tow un-ticketed cars, the only way to move a troubling vehicle is to ring the person it belongs to, ask them to come outside, and park their car elsewhere!

If only this were the status quo of America, 1998. I very easily could have left my car in that brick flowerbed of my neighbor’s yard, ensuring my phone number could be easily viewed from the windshield and awaited their pleasant phone-call request for my car's removal!