By Andrei Lankov
In the late 1920s and early 1930s officials of the Seoul municipal administration undertook some very interesting research. Every year the City Hall officials spent an entire autumn day sitting next to major roads and painstakingly counting all the vehicles and pedestrians that passed by.
So, how did the Seoul traffic look in 1928 when seen from the YMCA building, located on the same spot occupied by the YMCA now, on Jongno 2-ga? The count was made, for your reference, on Oct. 15.
In the busiest time, between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m., the officials noted down that 60 motorcars, 1,649 pedestrians and 57 trams passed their observation point.
On Oct. 12, 1937, the traffic increased to 68 motorcars, 2,160 pedestrians and 74 trams. In 1937, they also counted bicycles which began to appear in large numbers around 1935 to 1940. In 1937, 1,391 cyclists passed the point within one hour ― indeed, a large number, quite comparable to the number of pedestrians.
Still, this means that in 1928 in the most lively Seoul street in the midst of the post-lunch rush hours one would encounter only one car every minute!
Actually, we should not see this as a surprise. I could not find exact data for 1928, but a year earlier, in 1927 there were 130 motor vehicles (and 126 trams) in the entire city!
By 1937, the number reached 8,800, but then began to slide, due to the wartime shortage of spare parts and fuel. To put things in perspective, this meant that in Korea there was one motor vehicle for every 3,000 people.
At the same time, in the U.S. there was one car per every four people, in Australia one per nine and even in Brazil there was one car per 400 inhabitants. The world average at the time was one motor vehicle per 594 people, so Korea was lagging well behind the world average level as well.
Only a fraction of those vehicles were passenger cars. As of 1936, the passenger cars made up only 30 percent of the total. Some 36 percent were trucks and 34 percent were buses (and there were also 960 motorbikes nationwide).
Of the roughly 2,000 passenger cars which existed everywhere in Korea in the late 1930s, about half were registered in Seoul. But even in the capital, a car would cause a sensation in more remote parts of the city.
The children would run after this wonderful contraption, and of course everybody would normally know who was the car's owner and what brought him (very seldom her) to this particular location.
Public transportation was dominated by trams. An attempt to introduce buses took place in 1928 to 1933, but ended in commercial failure, so buses were downgraded to the role of auxiliary means of transportation, moving passengers from and to major tram stops.
The major reason for this scarcity was the economy. In 1928, Korea was a poor colony of a second-rate colonial power, even though there were first signs of the economic boom which was soon to change the Korean cityscape.
The cheapest car available would cost some 3,500 won. In those days, an unskilled worker would be paid 15 won a month, while a teacher would earn between 40 and 60 won, with the city average being roughly 20 to 25 won a month.
This means that the cheapest passenger car would cost an equivalent to 10 to 15 times the annual income of the average Seoul resident. Nowadays in Korea, it would be the equivalent of 300 to 400 million won (the price of a good apartment).
Most of the cars which traveled the Korean streets in the 1920s and 1930s belonged to some Japanese institutions or businesses.
Almost without exception, the cars were driven by chauffeurs: a person who could afford to buy a car, would definitely have no trouble hiring a professional driver-mechanic to take care of it (this remained the case in Korea until the early 1980s).
All cars were imported, and until the mid-1930s the U.S. vehicles dominated the roads. In the mid-1930s, Toyota and Nissan launched their production, and their cars appeared in Korea, but only in small quantities.
However, as it has been mentioned above, from 1937 the cars, which had never been numerous, began to disappear from Seoul streets.
In the war years, the vehicle registration statistics was not published out of secrecy, but we are safe to assume that the numbers went down considerably, perhaps to one third of the 1937 maximum level.
It became difficult and, from 1941, nearly impossible, to find spare parts for the imported cars. Petrol was rationed, and from around 1942 private individuals could not get petrol any more.
Tires were another serious problem: made of imported raw material, tires could not be replaced easily. So, the Korean car fleet, already small and badly maintained, began to wear down.
The large vehicles were often converted to gas generators.
These contraptions were fed with wood and produced some inflammable gas. The gas was then piped to the internal combustion engine. This helped, but not that much. So, after 1945 the car history of Korea began anew.
Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. He has recently published ``The Dawn of Modern Korea,'' which is now on sale at Kyobo Book Center and other major bookstores. The book is based on columns published in The Korea Times. He can be reached at anlankov@yahoo.com.
