After returning from my "visa run" to Japan, some of
my Korean students asked me what differences I had
observed between the two countries.  Half-jokingly, I
replied, "I didn't fear for my life when I crossed the
street in Japan like I do in Korea."  

The fact of the matter is, of all the countries I have
been to, Koreans are by far the worst drivers I have
ever seen.  They are incredibly aggressive.  In fact,
the surprise to me is that I haven't seen any
accidents.  Koreans must be extremely good drivers . .
. or extremely lucky.

The bus drivers here in Busan are the kings of the
road.  The busses are large enough to carry a decent
number of people, but small enough to be nimble in
traffic.  While American bus drivers are conservative
and stay in one lane (usually), Korean bus drivers
will use all the lanes of the road on their side.  It
is not unusual for standing passengers to sway from
their handholds as the busses change from one lane to
another or from the erratic starts and stops.  Being
from Arizona, I have been tempted to yell out,
"Yeeeee-haaa!  Ride 'em, cowboy!" but I doubt many
Koreans would understand the reference.

Bus drivers are also not shy about expressing their
emotions.  These guys lay on their horn often and with
a passion.  The other day I thought I'd count the
number of times our driver honked his horn at the
other cars, but I stopped after reaching twenty. 
Maybe he hit the horn a total of thirty times that
trip . . .and that was just in a fifteen-minute ride. 
One time he honked at cars in front of him who were
stuck in a traffic jam.  No one could move, and yet
this yahoo was honking at the others for them to get
out of his way.  Maybe he was honk-happy.

Taxi drivers are as bad as the bus drivers.  The only
difference, really, is in the size of the vehicles. 
I've only been in Busan for two months, and already
I've been on a couple of taxi rides from hell.  The
first ride was when the taxi driver misunderstood
where I wanted to go.  Instead of heading in a
southwesterly direction, toward Kyungsung University,
he drove toward the northeast.  When I started seeing
signs for Beomeosa, the Buddhist temple outside the
city (which I had already visited twice), I knew I was
in trouble.  The busses and subways were already shut
down for the night (which was why I took the taxi in
the first place), and I started wondering where I
would ultimately end up that night and how I was going
to get home.  What made matters worse were that all my
efforts at communicating with this guy didn't help me
at all.  I tried writing the name of the university in
Korean script (wrongly, as I later found out), and my
Korean phrasebook was absolutely no help at all.  The
man did lend me a cell phone, and I tried calling my
institute's assistant director, who is fluent in both
Korean and English.  However, I couldn't reach her on
the phone, only getting some Korean man whom, at 1:30
in the morning, must have wondered who the heck
"Colleen" was.  After about 25 minutes of travel, I
finally said quietly, "You're going the wrong way." 
Perhaps he had heard that before from other westerners
or maybe he understood the despair in my voice. 
Either way, he pulled over to the side of the road
where some Korean university students were walking.  I
told them where I wanted to go, and they gave him the
proper directions.  He banged his head with his hand a
couple of times, letting me know in that universal
gesture that "yes, I am an idiot," to which I could
only completely agree.  Finally, I arrived home,
almost an hour after I first started and 20,000 won
poorer (he actually gave me a 15,000 won discount;
however, a normal ride home only costs 4,500 won).

Then, just the other night, I had another terrible
taxi ride.  This guy took me home the right way, but
he was really aggressive behind the wheel.  He whipped
us from lane to lane, and several times I had to hold
onto the front seat in order to keep steady.  Just
before I got home, another taxi cut in front of my
driver.  My driver, pissed at this other guy, swung
around and cut in front of him. (Which, of course,
placed me in the center of any accident should we get
rear-ended.)  The other guy got pissed himself, and he
swung around to my driver's left.  Both men opened
their windows (we're now at a red light), and both
started cursing at each other.  Seconds earlier, I had
been frightened to death of being in an accident; now
I couldn't help but laugh at these two guys.

The motorcyclists here are pretty similar to most
other motorcyclists around the world.  They like to
drive between the lanes whenever they can, although
I've seen more than a few of them drive by me on the
sidewalks.  The other night was pretty strange for me.
 One minute, I saw three guys riding a motor scooter
together.  Not a motorcycle, mind you, but a smaller
motor scooter.  No sooner had I finished shaking my
head, wondering how the heck the third guy was able to
hang on, when a motorcycle with two people on it came
down the road with their headlight off.  This is at
one a.m.  By the way, none of the five people were
wearing a helmet.

Speaking of motorcycle helmets, Koreans wear some
interesting fashions.  There are a few guys who wear a
helmet that is very similar in shape to the Nazi
helmet of World War II.  Just paint 'em black (if they
aren't already), put a couple of SS stickers on the
sides, and voila!  Instant Nazi helmets!  The other
motorcycle helmet fashion this year is fins.  They're
regular motorcycle helmets, but they sport either two
or four fins on the top.  I have no idea what purpose
they might serve or if they're just an aesthetic
design.  Either way, I'm almost tempted to buy a
four-fin helmet just so I can take it back to America
and turn some heads.  (Of course, then I'd have to
learn how to ride a motorcycle.)

I've been pretty hard on the Korean drivers in this
essay, and I do want to say that not every Korean
drives badly.  I've had a number of taxi and bus
drivers who have been very good.  Also, the few times
I've ridden with other people in cars (like the Korean
employees at my institute), they've been very good
drivers as well.

One last story, and I include it only because it
happened on the bus.  I was sitting down in one of the
seats, putting photos into a new photo album, when a
high school girl standing next to me began saying "I
love you, I love you . . ." over and over again.  I
had no idea who she was talking to, but I decided to
say to her, "I love you too."  This embarrassed the
heck out of her, and the three friends who were with
her burst out laughing.  After a few seconds of
turning her back to me, she turned around and said,
"I'm sorry."  I went back to working on my photo
album, but just before she got off the bus she again
said, "I love you."