Ruminations in Korea

Comment by Blinger

30 October 2004 @ 5:16 pm

Cost: The humiliation of being behind the dump truck again.

And like any good joke the punchline is saved for last. This made me laugh out loud…

Comment by Ped Xing

30 October 2004 @ 9:35 pm

I think it depends quite a bit on where you are. One night a few years ago found me in Baltimore, MD, in a 40mph zone, moving at ~80mph, accelerating toward a 25mph zone. (I have /nothing/ to offer in my defense.) To this day, I don’t have a clue why I didn’t get a ticket.

After watching me fumble frantically for my registration for about thirty seconds, the officer asked me what my record looked like. I mumbled something like, “Perfect…up to now…” He told me that he’d check my record, and if I was telling the truth, he’d leave it at a warning, and otherwise I’d get /two/ tickets. I’m really glad I was telling the truth.

Comment by Infidel

30 October 2004 @ 10:58 pm

I share your perplexity at the way cops are treated in Pusan, but then again a few cops still take bribes. Not as many as before, but it still happens. Also, as long as police duty is a desk job substitute for army service, most Koreans, like my wife, will consider them just between mouth breathers and draft dodging traitors. A friend of my wife’s was even robbed by this low-level hood while she purposefully waited right against the wall of the police station near the harbor. She waited there, because she thought it was safe, but all the cops were inside the building. When she went inside to report the incident, they all just stared at her like she had ruined their break.

There’s the baggage from the days when cops were little more than ball-breakers for the Japanese and whose only other skills were collecting fees, picking informants, and torture. I also remember a time when a teacher left after a nasty few months of quarrelling with everyone in the office, Koreans and expat, and going to the labor board. He decided to steal equipment to compensate himself for the money he claimed he deserved. Now, honestly, we never saw him take the stuff, but he never turned in his keys, and the only place missing equipment was from where he had keys. Anyway, we told the professor, who we had a good relationship with and who had worked in the States, call the cops. He refused, because he didn’t want the university to get a bad name for hassling foreigners. We told him we didn’t care. We wanted our good name cleared, and we wanted to know the truth. Truth is, we hated the guy’s guts, but we didn’t want our Korean colleagues thinking we condoned stealing. This prof, and he was a stand-up guy, told about about how much the cops were low-life scum and the best way to deal with situations like that was to take the law into his own hands, ie, he would call around to the other universities and institutes and blackball the teacher if he tried to get hired.

Third example when I was a soldier. I saw this husband pounding on his wife outside a bar with a beer bottle. She was lying in the gutter. Soldiers were walking past, trying to stop him, but the husband was screaming and fighting them off. The cops were standing outside their car about a hundred feet away jawing with each other. The American MPs came, and told the soldiers to stay clear.

I’m sure many expats could recount similar stories ad nauseum. Honest cops have a lot of work to do to prove themselves with civilians. And, the government needs to end conscription, pay the cops more, and train them all better.

Comment by Nomad

31 October 2004 @ 3:49 pm

Wow Jeff,

Not only have you (allegedly) seen Korean traffic police, you’ve also (allegedly) verbally interacted with them. I wish you’d have taken some pics, because I’ve put Korean traffic cops in the same category as UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster and Sasquatch.
Lots of people claim to have seen them but…

Comment by Jeff in Korea

31 October 2004 @ 5:04 pm

Nomad,

Well…Maybe it’s just my luck. I have seen a UFO and been in close proximity to a Sasquatch… So I guess seeing a Korean traffic cop should be expected.

(I’m serious about the UFO and the sasquatch by the way….but those are stories for a different day… Into my goofball mix, you might wan’t to throw in the two evil spirits and two ghosts that I have seen)

Comment by Big Al

1 November 2004 @ 8:48 am

Infidel has hit it right on the head! If Korea wanted to have a real police force they should first, double their pay. Make it a job that is seeked after and not a draft dodging dodge. Second, train them! I get the feeling that alot of them are given a uniform and shoved out the door. I can’t count the times when I drove by a police vehicle and the two officers are fast asleep. I got pulled over on the Kwoungbu expressway last week and I don’t speak Korea.
Him: You speak Korean?
Me: No
Him: sucking air. Go!

Trackback by Simon World

1 November 2004 @ 3:10 pm

Asia by Blog

Asia by Blog is a twice weekly feature, posted on Monday and Thursday, providing links to Asian blogs and their views on the news in this fascinating region.

This edition contains the consequences of unpaid wages in China, an American nuclear scientis…

Comment by Plunge

2 November 2004 @ 12:08 am

Wow Jeff, curiosity is piqued and it is around Halloween. Why don’t you share a ghost story or two?

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2 November 2004 @ 9:26 pm

You know 카파라치 sounds like some sort of latin dance

Every Saturday for the past little while I have been going to Jeonju to play basketball. This last Saturday as I was getting off at the Jeonju IC and racing up towards the World Cup stadium I drove under and overpass going about 90km/h. What that equat…

Comment by Rory

9 November 2004 @ 2:42 am

Just found your site. I like it, sounds like you have been here a long, long, long time.

Just one thing. What is a “Semi blind” corner? You can either see around it, or not…