Finders keepers, losers weepers

• Published Dec 16, 2015 5:01 PM KST
• Updated Dec 16, 2015 5:01 PM KST

By John Burton

Several Sundays ago, I returned from a business trip, laden with several bags, and immediately went to my office to do some work. After several hours, I left for home carrying the luggage, including a carry-on, a suit bag, a document bag and a computer bag.

It was 8 o’clock at night. It had begun to rain heavily and I had no umbrella. Although burdened with the luggage, I dashed to a corner restaurant whose entrance was protected by an awning and laid the assorted bags besides the door to the closed restaurant.

My office is behind the Jungno-gu district office and there wasn’t much traffic on a Sunday night. Since it was raining, it was also difficult to flag down a taxi. After several minutes, one finally stopped. Relieved, I thrust my bags into the taxi and went home.

When I arrived and took the bags out of the taxi, I was shocked to discover my computer was missing. Apparently in my rush to enter the taxi and get out of the rain, I had left the computer on the sidewalk by the restaurant.

I asked the driver to take me back to where he picked me up. As we drove through the heavy rain, I wondered if Seoul would pass what is known as the “Yamanote test.”

This refers to the belief that the Japanese are so honest that if someone leaves a package on the overhead rack in a train carriage of the Tokyo’s circular Yamanoterail line, it would still be there when the train returns an hour or so later to the same station where the passenger got off.

I comforted myself as I sat in the back of the taxi with the story of a Korean friend who had lost his wallet a total of three times in Seoul, including once on the subway, and had it returned every time with the contents intact, including the money.

If I left my computer on the sidewalk in New York, London or Paris, I would have immediately written it off, never to be seen again. But this was Seoul, one of the safest cities in the world.

Korea has come a long way in terms of public morality. I remember seeing a clip of Bob Hope during the Korean War at one of the American comedian’s famous USO shows to entertain overseas U.S. troops.

Hope is on stage wearing a dark suit and a Korean horsehair hat and twirling a long daegeum pipe. “I hear you guys have problems with thieves,” said Hope to the GIs. “But I didn’t how bad it was until I got off the plane here andI turned around and saw the staircase had already disappeared.” Peals of laughter followed.

It was less than 30 minutes since I left the street corner when we returned there. I climbed out of the taxi and saw the computer bag was…gone. I paid off the taxi driver and ran to a police station which was half a block away. It was clearly visible from the street corner and I had hoped someone had taken the computer there. No such luck. I did file a report notifying about its disappearance in case someone later turned it in to the police.

When I asked my office staff next morning whether I would ever see my computer again, they asked, “What type of computer was it?’” “An Apple MacPro,” I replied. “No way will it ever be returned. It’s a premium brand,” they said. “But it was six years old,” I noted. “Doesn’t matter,” they added.

When I told my story to a friend in the security industry, he said that “It’s probably already on its way to China for resale.” He added there is a healthy trade in lost goods, particularly smartphones, among taxi drivers who find stuff left by passengers.

I discovered even further depths of cynicism. Another friend suggested that it may have been taken by one of numerous policemen who were then patrolling the area in connection with the hiding out of Han Sang-gyun, the KCTU leader, at the Jogyesa temple.

So my faith in the honestyof Koreans appears to have been shattered. But I still have hope. My Korean friend who lost his wallet told me that in one instance it was not returned to him until five or six months later since it took that long to make its way through the police bureaucracy after it was turned in.

And just this morning as I was going to work to write this column, I left my hat on the bus. Luckily, the bus has a circular route and I ran to a bus stop on the return route and ten minutes later the bus appeared. I climbed onboard and found the hat, a confirmation of the Yamanote test. But then again, a cheap hat is not an Apple MacPro.

John Burton, a former Korea correspondent for

the Financial Times, is now a Seoul-based independent

journalist and media consultant. He can

be reached at johnburtonft@yahoo.com.