Taxi drivers in Korea have a certain… uh… reputation. While I am quite sure that it is only a few proverbial bad apples, we all know what the same proverb says. Accordingly, there is something delicious about this story. Even more so when you remember that it’s a two way street, and nobody is sticking up for the poor passenger who could possibly make the same mistake.
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28 Comments
Link doesn’t work for me in either Firefox or Explorer.
Odd, don’t know what to say. The code is about as simple as it can be. Anyway, here is the link:
http://joongangdaily.joins.com.....id=2881283
Doesn’t work in Firefox or IE for me, either.
Not working for me in IE.
No workee.
Problem comes from joongang’s site. All you can see there is the intro:
Cabbies blue about similar notes October 9, 2007
The 1,000 won bill is light green. The 10,000 won bill is light blue. But their sizes are almost the same, and nearly 90 percent of the country’s taxi drivers are having trouble telling the new notes apart, according to a recent survey. According to
1000 light green? 10,000 light blue? Huh?
The cabbies would never survive in the US, where the money is basically the same color and size.
Oh and the link doesn’t work. Maybe the paper is fixing the article if they made the mistake noted above.
To support these cabbies I propose they be given part-time jobs at the foreign exchange counter of my local bank. I have plenty of
10100 dollar notes and I’m short won.This is old news man!! Already reported in the English dailies here about 6 months ago. Must have been a slow news day at the Joongang Daily or something to go and publish old news.
“1000 light green? 10,000 light blue? Huh?
The cabbies would never survive in the US, where the money is basically the same color and size.
”
Yeah, I thought the 1000 was light blue and the 10000 was light green. In any case, remember that these taxi drivers are the same people who were on TV demanding money from the Korean government if it went ahead with its plans of making it mandatory to drive with the headlights on during the day because (brace yourself)…they would have to replace the car batteries more often.
PS. So, do you figure that the taxi drivers who are complaining are either colour blind or illiterate, or maybe both?
I think color blindness is a serious issue with Korean cab drivers (and bus drivers) as they are unable to even make out the difference between red green and amber at traffic lights.
#14:
LOL, leguwan…
the LOL is toward post #13, i mean.
maybe it’s me who has the mathematical capability of a tube of lipstick…
Korean cabbies get a hard wrap but I think they are not so bad compared to some other countries - even developed.
I have a fair few cab stories from Korea that involve being drunk at the wee hours of the morning. Cabbies think they can get away with a bit more not realising their drunk foreign passenger knows any better.
However in terms of getting taxis from 6am-midnight Korean cabs a pretty good.
1. Cabbies can speak the language of 99% of their passengers.
2. Cabs are very cheap and you get the service you pay for.
3. Relatively easy to find one.
4. Don’t expect tips.
5. Know their cities well and don’t need to rely on GPS.
I’m sure there are many negative stories and I have a fair few too, which involve missing a flight, sogaeting with a hapseong passenger and even a fight.
But taken as whole I’d say FOR THE PRICE YOU PAY..they are 7/10.
As for the ‘Mobeom’…I never catch them.
ROFLMAO, so hard it hurts - literally. I was t-boned the other day by a bus that ran a red light while I was making a left turn. Ended up pinned against the driver side door until the cops broke the window so I could crawl out. This knucklehead bus driver then tried to berate me for making a turn a full minute after the light had changed - I had to wait for a couple of other guys to turn in front of me and got delayed in the intersection because one of them ended up trying to make an illegal u-turn. The cops had to unwrap my hands from around the bus driver’s throat and probably only desisted from trying to charge me with something because (i) I threatened to kick their ass too, and (b) much more importantly, produced the card of my brother-in-law, a colonel in the National Police. Unfortunately, though, it ain’t just color-blindness; it’s a weird “world turned upside down” sense of entitlement. I once broke the nose of a bus driver whom I had chased down after he side-swiped me and then drove off with all the paint from my right fender and quarter panel on the side of his vehicle when he laughed about it when I caught him and blocked him in at an intersection to have a chat. I’m still missing the satisfaction after not having clocked his twin the other day, damn the consequneces.
Isn’t there a new statute imposing a KRW20 mil. fine on anyone assaulting a bus driver or cab driver?
The fact that holders of those two occupations were singled out for this sort of protection speaks volumes as to their poor driving skills.
@16 Baek du boy
7/10 … if you have a cock.
for women riding alone at night it’s a lot more like 1 or 2 out of 10. it’s even worse apparently if they’re seen saying goodbye to their foreign bf before getting, as what transpires next is a lot of questions fishing for the nitty-gritty of what the girl is into (English lessons or sex?) then basically ends up being a lecture about a girl’s personal choices in life and what she is doing wrong.
i know quite a few foreign girls who would even give drivers a flat zero.
#18,
No, really? You must be kidding. Wouldn’t that sort of protection make the bad ones even bigger assholes?
#19
The taxi drivers usually aren’t that bad to foreign guys with korean girls… I’ve ridden with korean girls about 1000 times, under many different circumstances, states of innebreation, times of day/night, states of intimacy. I’ve only had about 2 or 3 who were a-holes. That’s not that bad really. If they have a problem, just get out.
Best time though was when the taxi driver layed into my female friend for speaking to me in English (what a dirty slut?). She got angry and started arguing with him, but thanks to the boozing we’d just been doing, she bitched him out in English. Turns out that just mad him more angry, which made me laugh at his racist ass, who I was simultaneously hating. I told him to stop the car. To this day, I have know idea how I managed it, but somehow, from the backseat of his car, managed to get his taxi-driver’s license off the dash without him knowing. We got out, got in another taxi immediately, and as we took off I saw him burst out of his car. I waited a few blocks before I threw it out the window into the river. Not sure how hard it is to get that thing replaced, but I hope the prick is still as pissed about it as I am happy.
But like I said, the fraction of my taxi experiences that have been bad are quite low.
One more thing… what are the color-blind, illiterate amongst them going to do when the new high denomination bills come out??
cmm,
I think you misread, I was talking about girls who ride solo.
But I’ve had similar experiences with you while riding with a local girl.
I’ve even been kicked out of a cab because of “too much English”—that was funny as hell though seeing the guy get so angry.
I wonder if poor cab experiences are more of a Seoul thing. In both Ulsan and Busan the cab drivers are usually honest to a fault. Recently one guy reset his meter cause he’d misunderstood my destination. Others have switched to honorifics when they find out I’m a teacher. The other day in Gangneung (ok that’s Gangwondo not Gyeongnam) a taxi driver gave me a ride for free. I was in a sort of out of the way place, but it was the end of his shift so he didn’t want to drive me all the way to the train station. He drove me to a busier area, flagged another cab for me and didn’t charge me a cent. I must have been looking particularly touristy that day. For the record - Cacausian female, have travelled at all times of day and night, various states of sobriety with various combinations of fellow passengers.
Footbat, I can’t speak for Korean/foreign girl…I guess the score would be lower for them.
I never found drivers cared if I had a Korean girl with me, at any time of the day or night. Although one night a driver was surprised I could speak Korean, then he did ‘hapseong’ and picked up a girl going the same way (at about 7pm on a saturday night) he tried ’sogaeting’ and told the girl I’d be a good catch. She was too shy even tell me her name! Although the friend I was about to meet wouldn’t have been too pleased!
The continuum of experiences I’ve had with Korean taxi drivers goes something like this:
1. Wearing whatever with Korean men — 0% bad
2. Wearing whatever with foreign men — 1% bad
3. Wearing suit alone — 2% bad
4. Wearing casual alone — 4% bad
5. Wearing suit with Korean chica — 8% bad
6. Wearing casual with Korean chica — 16% bad
In my admittedly anecdotal experience, these dudes don’t like you riding with “their” women. They also show more respect for business attire. Also, they’ve gotten better over the years, which either means more respect for the aged or successful government politeness programs, or a combination thereof. And by bad I mean various levels of the driver being a dick, from mild to extreme.
Fluency in Korean — or lack thereof — is also a mitigating factor.
I made a new year’s resolution about 4-5 years ago to keep my cool with taxi drivers. Like everyone else, I encountered the usual range of experiences, but I was starting to feel that I was either going to go insane or to prison if I didn’t chill. I found that the key element to keeping my cool is to not talk to the driver unless absolutely necessary. If the driver asks me if I speak Korean, I always say no, even if I have to later give some directions in Korean. If they ask me something in English, I tell them I am from France (yes… FRANCE?!). I have found that the less I talk to them, the less annoyed we both are by the end of the trip. Whether I am going to work, a bar, a performance, on a date, whatever, if the driver asks, I just tell him I am going home. Enough said… the end. Fewer confrontations… happier VJ.
Being French — in Seoul taxis — is cool. I do it all the time! [of course, I *am* French
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