My life at a Korean law firm (part 16)

By Jacco Zwetsloot

While living at the teacher training institute, I began to learn to ride a motorcycle. The campus had a big car park, and a technician, Mr. Ahn, owned a small locally made motorbike with a low horsepower engine.

He kindly allowed me to ride that thing around the car park and, as my confidence grew, outside the campus in the countryside. For the first time, I could understand that feeling of liberation and joy that motorcyclists must feel.

Not long after, the American teacher who had picked me up from Gimpo Airport that first day in July 1996 decided that he would leave Korea for good. He had a motorcycle and wanted to sell it to me, but he lived all the way down in Gunsan.

So one Friday after work I took the train via Iksan to Gunsan. I stayed at John's house overnight and the next day he organized a removal van, the ubiquitous blue Bongo truck, to take me and the bike back up to Pyeongtaek.

The motorcycle I bought was a Daelim, bigger than Mr. Ahn's, and with a little more horsepower, but it was still just 125cc. It took some time to get used to this machine, and I am not that adventurous or bold, so I just drove it locally and into the town of Anjung.

I found a nearby motorcycle repair shop to help me with oil changes and so on. John had replaced the original horn with a very long and loud one, to attract the attention of cars and (hopefully) reduce the chance of being hit.

I liked the horn, but one day when the motorcycle got rained on, something went wrong with the connector cable, because when I pressed the horn it started but would not stop again, and I had to pull the cables loose to stop the thing from attracting the wrong sort of attention.

When I went to have the ownership transferred to my name, I ran into a serious problem. John had written the most rudimentary bill of sale by hand on a page in my diary, and when I showed that at the local registry office, they just laughed.

They told me I needed an official form filled in and signed (with the red dojang stamp). Otherwise, they would believe that I had probably stolen it, or received it from someone else by unlawful means. In a panic, I called John ― who luckily was still in the country ― and told him what was going on. He spoke Korean so he was able to sort it out one way or another, perhaps by faxing a document from his local police station or something. Finally the motorcycle was mine.

In the fall of 1998, when I was ordered to move to Gimpo, the motorcycle came with me, on the back of a Bongo truck once more, but this time with all my other worldly possessions. I was grateful to have the motorcycle in Gimpo, because the schools where I worked were too far to walk. Having the motorcycle meant I could easily zip between the school where I taught in the morning and the other in the afternoon.

However, there was a problem. I had been woefully misinformed about the license required to ride a motorcycle in Korea. Several people told me that I did not need a separate license for a motorcycle with an engine of less than a certain size, just an international car driver's license.

This, it turns out, was wrong. And so I had to go to the Gimpo Police Station to apply for a motorcycle license. The test was only held on a certain day each month, and if I failed either the written or practical component, I would have to return a month later. More importantly, I was forbidden to ride the motorcycle.

The written test consisted of several of true-or-false questions. The paper was, of course, in Korean, and while my conversational Korean was improving all the time, my knowledge of vehicular safety jargon (largely based on Chinese characters) ranged from nil to minimal.

Luckily, I was given some extra time and allowed to use my Korean-English dictionary, while a friendly policeman sat beside me to assist with finding words, and probably to make sure I did not cheat.

I cannot recall how many questions there were, but even at the end of my extended time, I had only completed one third of them. At the policeman's advice, I just guessed the rest and handed in the test paper.

After half an hour of waiting while the papers were graded, I learned to my pleasant surprise that I had passed. I felt momentarily sorry for the Koreans ― there were one or two ― who had failed, but then I had to get ready quickly for the practical test.

This was a kind of skill-testing course. There was an S-shaped outline along which we had to ride backwards and forwards without touching our feet on the ground, and then some orange cones between which we had to slalom, also without touching the ground.

I knew this would be tough, because my balance is not that good at the best of times, and I had not practiced for this. We had to use the motorcycle provided by the police station, and it was the smallest machine available, the one used by every local restaurant for meal deliveries. When I turned the handlebars it hit against my knee and made balancing even harder. As a result, I easily failed the S-course and there was no point even trying the orange cones.

For the next month, I was officially not allowed to ride to work or indeed to anywhere. At school, I borrowed the small delivery motorcycle belonging to one of the administration staff and practiced riding for the next test on an S-shaped course that he had drawn for me with a piece of chalk in the parking lot.

The next month I went back and passed the practical test handily. I was now a legal motorcycle rider in Korea.