Korean Job Discussion Forums

[aldershot]

i've been driving my little car in korea for some time now. i also ride a motorcycle. i'm usually pretty relaxed when driving around, albeit knowing that (generalization) koreans tend not to be the most, uh, shall we say, um, AWARE drivers i've seen. i usually let the dink who cut me off/pulled out in front of me/stopped in the middle of the road without warning go with a honk of the horn and a shake of the head. but i think this passive attitude has built up and taken its toll. today i flipped out.

i was driving on the highway where the speed limit was 70km/h. it was raining pretty badly and the dude in front of me (in the so-called fast lane) abruptly stopped, nearly putting the front of my car up his sphincter.
i had had it with the bad driving. i let it rip. i was flashing my lights, honking my horn and flipping the dude off. he sped up to 50km/h and was apparently in an argument with his wife/girlfriend in the passenger seat, completely unaware of my attempts to get his attention.

he finally pulled into the right lane, and as i passed him, i gave him a final bird. i continued to my destination, pulling off the highway into town.

this dude followed me. i was stopped at a red light, and the guy was a few cars behind me. he got out of his car and started punching my window. i rolled the window down and the guy was screaming at me, completely crazy. he couldn't handle that i flipped him off in front of his girlfriend. so, i screamed back. every korean swear word i know i threw down his throat. he told me to go back to my country, that foreigners were a piece of sh*t. i told him the driving habits of koreans were worse than the whoring habits of farang in thailand. he kept assaulting the car. i threatened to call the cops.

the light turned green, a hundred cars were waiting to go but couldn't because this guy was blocking the lane. i just continued on my way. i flipped him off one last time.

it felt soooo good to let out that bottled-up road-rage... but was i wrong? this guy probably has a pretty low opinion of foreigners because of me. but i suspect he had that attitude before me as well. anyway, my window is ok now, i promised it a nice tint for next summer.

[laogaiguk]

[Hanson]

I had a similar experience just the other day:

My wife, daughter and I were on the road, and this moron made a right on a red, but swayed out into the second lane, without looking. I had to slam on the breaks and swerve to avoid him. I caught up to him at the next red light, got out and went up to his car.

But he had pulled up about 5 meters from the car in front of him, and as soon as I got to his window, he gave me the patented (and extremely annoying) hand wave (you know the one: it's a dismissive I'm sorry), and inched forward to avoid me. I smashed the back of my hand on the rear window (hard, but not too hard as to break it) as he went forward and I went back to my car...

Driving here is an exercise in patience, awareness and anticipating bad driving.

And to those who say that actions like that give foreigners a bad name, how is idiotic driving by Koreans supposed to be met by a foreigner?

[aldershot]

[Captain Corea]

aldershot, sounds like you guys were ripe for eachother. Now if only people could throw down in this country

[uberscheisse]

the "wake the *beep* up" punch on a taxi driver's side window as he changes lanes into a spot already occupied by me on my scooter without bothering to turn his head is an oft-repeated phenomenon on the roads i frequent.

and when i put myself in their shoes - imagine if you were on auto-pilot, ambling over into another lane thinking nothing's going wrong... and someone punches your window.

BOOM. it gets a point across. "whoops, my car is a giant kettledrum, and i'm a bleeding-arse idiot".

[Qinella]

First rule of driving: always expect the people around you to do something dangerous.

Nice story, aldershot. You gotta let that rage out sometimes, I suppose. I saw a Korean dude in an SUV roll down his window and let loose on the driver of a taxi I was in in Daejeon once for cutting him off earlier. So you're probably not the odd man out.

[uberscheisse]

[aldershot]

my korean's not bad. not good enough to tell the dude such a colourful analogy. i just used that to paint the story in a brighter colour. what i told him was along the lines of koreans being worse drivers than a pair of broken 3 woods.

[periwinkle]

[uberscheisse]

that's when you say to the girl "see this now... imagine what married life is going to be like!"

[RACETRAITOR]

You said it looked like he was arguing with his passenger. Probably that's why he was so pissed at you, because he was already mad. He probably would have done that to anyone else, but I don't think Koreans generally flip each other off in traffic.

[Wangja]

I must be very lucky. I am currently driving over 600 km a week and in over a year of this have never seen such an incident as the OP's.

[Return Jones]

Simple solution: If you live in Seoul, don't drive. It's just not worth it. The driving culture here, although not as bad as in China or India, still has a long way to go to be considered reasonably civilized. It brings out the worst in people. Road rage is very bad and can lead to death. Stick to buses and subways. I love driving when I'm back home, but I hang up my keys when I'm here. The insane actions of other drivers I see every day make me realize I'm making the right choice.

[aldershot]

er... i don't live in seoul, but i agree about "korean driving culture".