Aged taxi drivers

By Park Moo-jong

One of the best ways to grasp what is going on our society is listen to what taxi drivers say. They are often dubbed “street opinion leaders.” As a good gauge of public opinion, their words mirror the people's mind.

Many of them have no “deep” knowledge of politics, the economy and so on, but have a good deal of common sense as an unearned asset from their frank and free talks with passengers from various walks of life during rides.

Of late, to listen to them to find topics about which I'd like to write for this column, I often use company-owned taxis, not owner-driven cabs, if possible. Such cabbies made headlines Tuesday due to their increasing age.

Data that an opposition lawmaker obtained from the government for the National Assembly audit of the executive branch showed that cabbies over the age of 65 numbered 72,800 across the country, accounting for 27 percent or slightly more than a quarter of the total.

Of them, 237 were 90 years old or more, and 110 of them work in Seoul with the oldest one being 92. It is nothing new that taxi drivers are increasingly getting old in this aging society.

Statistics (from the government) show that the number of drivers over the age of 65 was 2,797,000, up 1.7 times over the past five years, and traffic accidents they caused rose about 50 percent. But it is not right to take issue only with cabbies' age.

Some complain they feel uneasy when they meet an elderly driver, citing the increase in accidents. On the contrary, some others say they feel relaxed with such cabbies as they are more cautious than “younger” ones.

A leading Korean daily reported an episode about a 70-year-old cabbie in the Philippines: “The driver, while driving a young lady passenger, asked her to take another taxi because he was too tired to drive. Instead, she changed seats and took over the wheel, and the driver snored in a deep sleep in the back seat until she got to her destination.”

Frankly speaking, the age of 65 is not “old” at all these days when the average life span is getting longer. Rather, senior citizens over 65 can still work thanks to medical care and good nutrition. A simple fact is that continued work helps them maintain their health.

What's necessary is to strictly check the health and ability (to drive) of the elderly drivers and strengthen the screening of their qualification for the safety of passengers, not to speak of their own.

The reason why the number of aged cabbies is rising is simple. Young jobseekers are reluctant to take the wheel of a taxi due to low income, leading to many company cabs being “grounded” in garages due to a shortage of drivers

Age does not matter in this era. The problem is the shrinking income and increasing burden of labor (about 10 to 12 hours a day). Nine to five work is uncommon for cabbies in this country.

Many of the drivers lament that South Korea has the lowest taxi fare among 36 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The fare here is around one third of that in Japan.

A 67-year-year cabbie argued, “Nothing has changed for the better over the past 10 years. Rather everything is changing for the worse. Can you imagine that an ordinary driver earns less than 2 million won ($1,800) a month for their 12 hours of stressful labor at the wheel each day?”

Certainly, it is hard for cabbies, especially those in the 30 to 60 years age range, to make ends meet with such a low monthly pay. Another cabbie said that the situation is getting worse and he has no idea how to support his four-member family, including two children attending middle and high schools, on such a meager income.

He confessed, “I've never experienced the kind of hard times as I am now.” He told me what he heard from his hundreds of passengers over the past month. “Almost all the passengers, regardless of their age, occupation and gender, were of the opinion that the economy is failing.”

Even government officials express a similar pessimistic view, according to him. “Only those in Cheong Wa Dae do not seem to know what's going on outside the presidential office. What's important is not South-North relations. What's important is how to make a living, how to revive the sagging economy.” I agreed.

The passengers' topics, according to the drivers, mostly centered around the minimum wage, the 52-hour workweek and heavy taxes,” not inter-Korean ties. In particular, they absolutely agreed that Kim Jong-un will never give up his nuclear weapons, which are his sole lifeline.

I wonder if those in charge of handling state affairs, especially the economy, have ever listened to people's voices: “What's more serious at the moment is that there is no sign of things getting better in the near future.”

A society where an honest taxi driver working for 12 hours a day for a public service earns less than 2 million won a month is not healthy, whatever the situation in other professions.

Still, politicians are only concerned about their own political or personal interests and engaging in fruitless partisan feuds, ahead of the important Assembly process of inspecting government ministries and agencies.

Fortunately, however, the related authorities and the Seoul city government announced a tentative plan Tuesday to raise the base taxi fare, which has been frozen for the last five years, by about 33 percent possibly from next January.

When taxi drivers are happy, our society can be happy, too.

Park Moo-jong (emjei29@gmail.com) is a standing adviser of The Korea Times. He served as the president-publisher of the nation's first English daily newspaper from 2004 to 2014 after working as a reporter since 1974.