I realised I don’t really blog much (or never) about the downsides or bad experiences I’ve had with the culture or society. Well, I didn’t really experience anything bad personally until the last time when I had stayed in Seoul for 3 months, albeit not long but longer than a normal tourist would stay, I had realised some societal problems. I’ve been wanting to blog about this during my stay in Korea (Nov-Feb), but thanks to severe procrastination and lack of motivation, this post is finally churned out 2 months after ending the awesome stay I had in Seoul.
Smoking and the very bad traffic regulations in S. Korea (in particularly, Seoul) are the two particular thorns that I’ve experienced during my stay. Perhaps the fact that I’m from Singapore where traffic rules and regulations are strict and drivers, most of the time, would adhere to them compliantly has made me quite sensitive to the audacious traffic in Seoul.
In Korea, I always had to put on an extra guard when crossing the road because even when the traffic light is red and the green man is on, a lot of the cars would just zoom by! Alright, so I’m talking about a small one-way road with one traffic light and I believe that the drivers think that it’s not necessary to stop to allow pedestrians to cross. But certainly, that is no excuse! Of course, on bigger roads, drivers tend to comply to the traffic lights but with the amount of reckless drivers in Seoul, a pedestrian always has to be extra extra careful when crossing any roads.
It’s not just the dangerous interaction between pedestrians and drivers but it includes the absence of driving etiquette between drivers as well. It is very common to see drivers cut lanes abruptly, without giving signals or some drivers would signal but the other drivers wouldn’t allow the drivers to change lane by dangerously tail-gating the front car. I supposed this might stem from the Koreans’ competitive attitudes, especially in the capital city where everyone seems to be in a hurry, even when they’re walking on the streets and in the subways.
Once, I was lost in the subway for about a few minutes because that station had so many escalators leading to different lines. So I was kind of walking slowly, unsure of which escalator to take and suddenly in a split second, a large crowd of commuters rushed past me. A middle-aged man almost ran into me but he prevented the collision by swerving past me expertly. It was kind of scary being lost in a crowd of seemingly unfeeling, hoggish strangers.
Some of these strangers can be rather inconsiderate, which brings me to the thing about smoking in Korea. It is widely known that Koreans smoke a lot and this is also frequently depicted in their media outlets, from movies to photo shoots.
Son Ye-Jin, being portrayed as a sexy smoker in a photo shoot for Singles magazine
Kim Hye-su in movie, ‘타짜’ / 'The War of Flower’
Why is Won Bin so hot even with a poison stick?
Sometimes media tend to blow things up a little and I didn’t think that the situation would be even more serious in reality than movies, dramas and photo shoots. I was taken quite aback to realise that there are so many restaurants and cafes where they allow smoking indoors. Majority of the cafes have a small separate smoking room for smokers to kick back and relax but there are SOME that allow smokers to smoke everywhere they like. I’ve encountered a couple of such places and it was just horrible. It was excruciating to sit there, trying to swallow a cup of caramel latte while staring at the white streaks of smoke surrounding me in an enclosed place where there is no where else the smoke has to go except into my lungs! Such cafes are definitely not for non-smokers to hang out, chit-chat and enjoy a cuppa. Honestly, I was completely astonished when I had such an experience for the first time in Korea.
Restaurants have an even worse record. I cannot count on my fingers, how many of the Korean restaurants I’ve been to allow smoking indoors without separated areas. Bf said that most 술집 (bars ; literally “alcohol house”) allow smoking indoors and so do some restaurants that serve alcohol, so that’s probably more than 80% of the restaurants in Korea. It was always such a huge downer to see white streaks of smoke floating in front of me when enjoying my BBQ pork ribs meal, and realising the people at the table next to ours were smoking. That means I was not only filling up my stomach with food but my lungs with poisonous gas throughout the entire meal.
It also seem like there are a lot of instances when people smoke anywhere they like even though certain places are forbidden, such as in the cabin of a subway train:
I personally think that certain rules, which may face heavy criticisms by the Korean public, such as prohibiting smoking indoors (EVERYWHERE) and decreasing the amount of smoking-areas around the country need to be implemented by the government unless they want this VERY disturbing trend to proliferate even more. And, what about the non-smokers who don’t want to be second-hand smokers but cannot help it?
I suppose this angst in me to the two issues I faced in Korea stems from the fact that I am from Singapore, where the strict country rules have pretty much regulated a smoking-free environment and cultivated relatively decent driving etiquettes in drivers.
Lastly, here’s an old clip of DB5K singing the ‘Stop Smoking Song’ back in 2008, with a strong focus on second-hand smoking (간접흡연).
