There Are People They Shouldn’t Let Out in Public…

… and in Korea, many of them drive taxis. Monday evening, we met an extra special case of this, and it ruined a chunk of our evening.

I wonder if it’s just the part of the city I’m in? I never have these sorts of problems outside of a stretch of city from Yongsan (where a random older bastard drunk tried to pick a fight with me for not saying “Hello!” to him with a hakwon teacher smile) to Yeokgok (where scumbag scooter drivers shout things like “slut!” at Korean women who happen to be beside a foreign man, and a depressing number of taxi drivers seem to be just scrapping for a fight… and get abusive of people who dare to be headed to destinations they’d rather not go to).

Lesson for the day: if the cabbie seems like a prick from the first instant, or seems not to want to takke you where you’re going? Just get out of the taxi and take the one behind it. Sooner or later, you’ll get a sane cabbie who’ll be glad to take you there, or at least won’t try to torture you all the way. Most of the cabbies I get in this neighborhood are nice, though they’re harder to flag down than in most places I’ve lived in Korea. But some, especially as I’ve noticed in Bucheon, are mentally ill, and best avoided.

You might want to reply when the idiot starts shouting, “Fuck you, you fucking bastard!” at you in Korean for no sensible reason, but as with monkeys, feeding only encourages them.

2 thoughts on “There Are People They Shouldn’t Let Out in Public…

  1. Yeah the taxi drivers around Bucheon do seem to be one rung lower on the ladder of societal norms and morays, must be something in the water around here. (or possibly the Soju).
    But for the record I’ve only ever been called a slut once by a guy on a scooter.

    1. Well, you know, Bucheon was a haven for the people edged out of Seoul in the 80s. I think a lot of people with crappy lives ahead of them (and behind them, too) ended up here, not that it excuses their behavior at all.

      Luckily, a good percentage of the cabbies and other people in the neighborhood are fine. There was a cabbie just the other day who, when asked, “Do you go to [destination]?” said, “Of course! It’s wrong to only take fares for faraway destinations, and not go to close-by ones!”

      And for the record, it wasn’t me being called slut, it was the woman I was walking with. What really pissed me off was that, because she knew which chicken place the punk was delivering for, we went down and his fucking employer defended the kid, saying, “Oh, no, he’s a good boy, he’d never do that!” (Which fails to explain why the little asshole fled when he saw us coming. Of this “good boy,” one of his acquaintances warned us that he was the sort of petty-crime-committing kid who’s in and out of legal trouble all the time.)

      The killer detail? When the little bastard concocted a story about how his friend’s nickname was this word that sounds just like the Korean word for “slut” and that he was calling to his friend on another scooter, the boss was all, “See! I knew there was an explanation for this! Of course he didn’t do anything wrong!” and wouldn’t back down even when I pointed out that (a) the kid was sneering back at us, not calling forward toward his friend, when he yelled the word, and (b) nobody yells to be heard by someone on a scooter up ahead of one’s own scooter while going at high speed. Even a juvenile deliquent knows he won’t be heard.

      It was the boss’s defense of that little bastard that pissed me off, to be honest. That, and the fact the little asshole hid for 30 minutes but when he finally showed up, he insisted he’d not done anything wrong.

      I don’t know about other parts of Bucheon, but Yeokgok (in the area of Wonmi Mountain), is not a place for decent people to live; certainly not a place for children to be raised; not a place where women should walk alone at night; in short, just plain not a pleasant place.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *