Smombie vs. Walking dead

By Park Moo-jong

Have you ever seen zombies walking in the streets or elsewhere?

Excuse me? What a ridiculous and absurd question.

No one has seen them except in horror films and "zombie walks," because a zombie is a "fictional" dead person who has returned to life as a walking corpse.

The word, zombie, of course, refers to a person who is or appears lifeless, apathetic or completely unresponsive to their surroundings, or can mean a computer controlled by someone else without the owner's knowledge and used for sending spam or other illegal activities.

But the fictional zombies as seen in the popular American TV series, "Walking Dead," in reality? No.

Alas, we meet many walking living zombies, called "smombies," every day thanks to a convenient digital device.

A "smombie" is a person who is so absorbed in their smartphone that they are completely unaware of their surroundings. Because their attention is directed towards their phone, they walk through life mindlessly like a zombie.

A portmanteau of smartphone and zombie, it was coined in Germany and is now popular around the world, as a wittier description than "smartphone addict."

We see smombies every day on streets _ or we sometimes don't if we too are part of the smombie horde, walking through life with our heads bowed.

It has been a common sight for us to see smombies bump into other passing pedestrians and from time to time walk into glass doors.

Yet, the word, chosen as "Germany's Youth Word of 2015," is emerging as a description for a big headache around the world.

Injuries and deaths from distracted smombies have become a daily routine worldwide.

A recent Reuters report claimed "More than 11,000 injuries resulted from phone-related distraction while walking in the United States between 2000 and 2011," citing a University of Maryland study published in 2015.

The number of accidents must be way higher nowadays, as the number of smombies has risen sharply.

This is not somebody else's business. South Korea is no exception. Traffic accidents caused by smombies "dead walking" in 2016 more than doubled from 1,360 in 2011.

Many countries are racking their brains over how to reduce accidents caused by phone-obsessed smartphone zombies. The city of Honolulu recently passed legislation to ban pedestrians from looking at mobile phones or texting while crossing the street.

The ban will take effect on Oct. 25 as Honolulu becomes the first major U.S. city to pass such legislation. Smombies can be fined between $15 and $130, depending on the number of times police catch them looking at a phone or tablet device as they cross the street.

London has also tested padding lamp posts to soften the blow for distracted smombies and the German city of Augsburg last year embedded traffic signals into the ground near tram tracks to help head-bowed pedestrians avoid injury.

With no wonder, opponents of the Honolulu law argue it infringes on personal freedom and amounts to government overreach.

But they should not overlook the simple fact that smombies also hurt others by bumping into them or causing more serious traffic accidents by paying more attention to their phones than the road in front of them. They are no different from drunk drivers.

There has also been a rising number of reports of children who were accidentally killed because their parents were absorbed by their phones and not watching them wandering into the street or drowning in water right in front of them.

The smartphone is undeniable. But we should not ignore the side effects.

The digital addiction, especially booming among young people, is an urgent problem that all of us have to seek the wisdom to solve for the mental and physical health of our growing generation.

As I wrote seven month ago in this column, a subway ride shows almost all the ill effects caused by smartphone addiction, defined as a "dependence syndrome" as the World Health Organization termed.

Here, there and everywhere in the train, we can see young people using their phones with earphones with their heads never up in the seats or standing.

While crossing streets, they are unable to hear sounds from outside, in particular honking, alarming drivers.

Maybe in less than 20 years time, spinal surgeons and ENT doctors will be meeting their best days, while hearing aid makers will be enjoying a flourishing business.

Elsewhere in the world, many countries, including South Korea, have made laws to discourage people from using cellphones while driving.

It's now time to follow Honolulu's lead to punish smombies roaming our streets.

The point about them is their lack of etiquette. The smombies, especially the young ones, do not care about others at all. This proves home and school education has fallen into neglect.

Park Moo-jong is the senior Korea Times advisor. He served as the president-publisher of the nation's first English newspaper from 2004 to 2014 after working as a reporter for the daily since 1974. He can be reached at moojong@ktimes.com or emjei29@gmail.com.