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| Seoul in 1957 with buses seen in the background / Robert Neff Collection |
By Robert Neff
Everywhere you look in Korea, there are buses. In 2018, there were about 47,500 buses and they carried 5.97 billion total passengers in 2019. These figures are truly impressive, but not overly surprising, considering how Korea's bus system is very modern and convenient, relatively comfortable (there is even free Wi-Fi) and inexpensive. For many, buses are an indispensable part of daily life.
The first bus service in Korea was established in 1912 by a Japanese company. According to Andrei Lankov, "these buses seated a scanty eight passengers on their bone-jerking wooden seats and crude suspension," and operated between Masan (now part of Changwon) and Jinju, both in South Gyeongsang Province. The next bus service was established in Daegu in July 1920 and it wasn't until April 22, 1928, that Seoul established its own service.
Seoul's bus company had 10 buses ― each capable of carrying 12 passengers ― operating along four routes in the city. In the summer, they operated from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m., while in the winter they began running at 8 a.m. and shut down at 7 p.m.
Despite the popularity of these early buses, there are surprisingly very few bus-riding accounts by Westerners. There could be several reasons for this lack of firsthand accounts, including the fact that most Westerners had their own personal transportation, preferred to use the streetcars and trains ― which were generally thought to be more comfortable and glamorous ― or were deemed to be so common as to make them unworthy of letters home.
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| According to the caption, a horse-powered bus in the streets of Seoul in the 1950s / Robert Neff Collection |
Fortunately, Richard Rutt, an English priest with the Church of England, kept an account of his life in a small village near Pyeongtaek in the late 1950s, and buses were a subject he did write about. His keen observations of the past may yet resonate in the present:
"Passengers travelled like condemned prisoners in a concentration camp: in winter bitterly cold, in summer dusty and stifled, stuffed in so tightly that you could scarcely move an arm. The one nightmare that village life held for me was that ghastly ten miles in the lurching bus. There was no need to dwell on the dangers. Stumbling over the bumpy road, we risked death in many forms: had the bus turned over in the flooded paddies we must have drowned; had a fire started, few could have escaped."
I still recall my first experiences of riding a local bus through the mountainous regions of Gangwon Province so many years ago. There was the constant fear of the bus running off the road and over a steep embankment ― fortunately, I never experienced it but I somewhat recall reading about these horrendous accidents. If memory serves me right, most of the time the accidents were caused by human error ― a driver falling asleep at the wheel or speeding.
Rutt also mentioned the need for speed in his account.
"Last month I was in a bus which had a race with another on a curving main road. The danger was horrifying. The driver clenched his teeth, and the conductress feverishly hustled passengers at stops, while some of the passengers spurred the game on. The terror ceased only when we were so long delayed at a halt that the other machine gained an indisputable lead."
Judging from the frequent complaints on social media, bus drivers still tend to drive fast but it has definitely improved over the last decade or so.
One thing that hasn't changed is the race for a seat, especially during rush hour. According to Rutt, when the bus arrived at the stop, there was "always a free fight" as the "youthful conductors" struggled to get the disembarking passengers off the bus before allowing new passengers to board. They rarely succeeded. "The women are always more frantic than the men, yet only grandfathers ever actually climb in through the windows."
It is interesting to note that Rutt was always provided with a seat, but it wasn't due just to his position as a priest, but more to his status as "a foreign guest." When he boarded, students, soldiers and police officers would often beckon him (referring to him as "father" when he wore his black suit and Roman collar, or "uncle" when he wore just normal clothing) and then surrender their seats.
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| A view of Seoul from a bus window in 1960 / Robert Neff Collection |
Once seated, however, he suffered like the rest of his fellow seated passengers:
"[Wet] fish indecently clad in scanty straw wisps under your knees, a bag of grain at your feet, a schoolboy between your shoulder blades, live chickens on your lap, and an elbow in your face. A bundle of dubious contents in a Japanese kerchief, including a badly corked bottle, may descend on any part of you at any time. Once I was showered with a confetti of tiny pink shrimps."
I recall the floors and all available space on the buses in the countryside (even up until the early 2000s) being filled with goods and merchandise of all kinds, but my recollections pale in comparison to Rutt's.
"There seems to be no restriction as to the amount of luggage a person can bring aboard. Women bring huge aluminum bowls of laundry, bags of grain, live chickens, sometimes even a small pig. Once I was travelling in a bus when there was a great to-do over the paraphernalia of a sorceress clambering aboard with her drums and gongs and trident."
Bus fares ― or, rather, the reluctance to pay them ― also caught Rutt's eyes and subsequently his pen. "Scarcely do I board a bus without seeing someone refuse to pay the proper fare, taking advantage of the conductor's youth." He noted that the sums were generally so small that he would have taken great pleasure in paying the offender's fare, but apparently he felt that doing so would have cast him in a negative light because he was a foreigner.
Despite the fares being so small, at the end of the day, the fare collector/conductor had a fairly large amount of money in their bag. Rutt spoke with one young boy conductor who confessed the temptations involved in handling the daily fares, which greatly exceeded the money he earned in a month. It is unclear if the boy ever succumbed to the temptation, but he was soon out of a job.
According to Lankov:
"From 1959 the new regulations transformed [the bus conductor position] into an exclusively female occupation (and also required the conductor girls to wear uniforms). By then the job of a bus conductor had long lost its initial glamour. Young women from the countryside with only a primary education, who came to cities in search of a better life, typically flocked to the profession."
Lankov further states that in 1982, city buses ceased to have any conductors. Perhaps in Seoul, but I know from experience that there were female bus conductors in other cities throughout the 1980s. I always admired their tenacity in collecting fares and managing to herd passengers on very over-packed buses.
So the next time you start to complain about the bus driver's manner of driving, the rush for empty seats or the amount of bags carried by your fellow passengers, remember that the past ― especially in regards to buses ― was much worse than the present.
Robert Neff has authored and co-authored several books including, Letters from Joseon, Korea Through Western Eyes and Brief Encounters.
