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Navigating through Seoul’s traffic can be a real test of one’s patience and will power.
What with the constant traffic jams, aggressive taxi and bus drivers, bulleting couriers on motorcycles and traffic law-breakers, you get a very volatile mix that has serious potential to injury.
But, ironically, from my experience driving in Seoul for nearly 20 years and 10 years prior in Canada, it is not the case. Driving in Seoul, you can be guaranteed more stress, but major accidents I beg to differ (not counting slight fender benders).
In a recent contribution entitled, ``Driving in Korea,” the writer seems to paint a mostly negative picture about the driving situation in Korea which is the natural knee-jerk reaction from someone who is used to the situation in a more developed country. Like many foreigners, he wishes upon Korea the standards and regulations he is used to in his home country of Canada. The vast majority of his complaints can be explained away by two different categories.
The first is land and people density. Basically, due to the lack of space and the over- population of people with cars, numerous problems occur, the biggest of which is heavy traffic. So if you are forced to tailgate, that is not a sign you are a bad driver, it just means you do not want some weasel cutting in front of you.
The other main result from this problem is of course parking. In a nutshell, lack of space equals few parking choices and, therefore sometimes it has to be on the curb. The higher rate of deaths in car accidents in Korea is probably due to it having nearly twice the population and one-hundredth of the land of Canada leading to greater opportunities to have accidents on highways where most of the deaths occur.
The second category is Korean mentality. Most people are well aware of Korea’s famous ``ppali ppali” culture, which loosely translates to mean ``hurry hurry.” This also affects driving habits since to get a job done, one must be a little faster than the other guy. Who doesn’t like their online purchase coming within a day or two, or having your flat tire fixed in your parking lot in 15 minutes after one phone call, or having your oven fixed within 24 hours?
These three things actually happened to me in the last week. In Canada, you can start growing a beard waiting for such services. My point is this, due to this ``ppali ppali” culture in Korea, drivers cut corners and sometimes yes, break the laws and yes, cause accidents.
Driving in Canada is no picnic. Did you know that the new law for speeding ― if you go over 150 kilometers per hour on the highway, the police take your car away on the spot. Right there, right then. Taking someone’s car away for speeding seems insane to me. There are radar traps everywhere so this past summer, my car never went more than 10 kilometers per hour over the limit.
In contrast, as the writer in ``Driving in Korea” pointed out, Korea’s navigation system is outfitted with alerts for all the fixed radars. How brilliant is that! So instead of ticketing and possibly snatching your car away, the Korean law warns you to slow down. Believe me, after driving bumper to bumper for half an hour, and I get a small open stretch of road, it gives me a slight endorphin rush to put the pedal to the metal.
For the most part, I am a defensive driver yielding to others and Korean traffic laws. At times, the heavy traffic and random bad drivers has me muttering expletives my daughter‘s ears should not hear.
But if I am ever late for an appointment, look out, because there is a good chance a couple of traffic laws may be broken en route. All of this of course, is with good judgment. Happy driving!
Robert Song has lived in Korea for almost 20 years and works in the educational publishing business. He can be reached at robertsong@hotmail.com.
