Buses in Korea

I’ve seen and done a lot here in Korea, and although I may never get around to covering it all here, I was particularly inspired to write by a recent weekend trip.  However, I wasn’t inspired by the location, although Tongyeong is a beautiful place where mountains and ocean have met in battle leaving a grand bay strewn with green peaks gasping for breath against surf and relentless tides, like weathered gravestones thick with moss stretching and disappearing into the morning mist.  Nor was I inspired by the history, even though it was the site of the incredible Hansando naval battle, in which Admiral Lee Soon Shin crippled the Japanese Navy, and in turn their military campaign in Korea, by destroying 47 ships, capturing 12 and allowing only 14 to limp off the battlefield.  The battle is also considered the third largest naval battle in history, but even that didn’t inspire me to write. 

 Somaemooldo Island one of the many islands that are part of the Hallyeohaesang National Park that stretches out to sea south of Tongyeong.

 Dress up in Admiral Lee Soon Shin's uniform and ready to row the Turtle Ship into battle.

A small fleet of Turtle Ships in Tongyeongs popular Gangguan Harbor.

Instead, it was my bus driver on my return trip from Tongyeong.  Although, he also shares the spotlight with many other bus drivers who have shuttled me across this county.  As some of my readers know, I have had quite a few interesting experiences riding buses around the world, from Peru, to China.  However, if bus racing ever became an international sport like Formula One, I believe Korea would produce some of the finest racers in the world.  I have had some pretty impressive drivers around the world in my travels, but I’d contend that the Korean drivers would even beat out the Indian drivers. 

Indian drivers are probably the most daring, and willing to take chances with their lives and the lives of all the passengers in their care - even the passengers clinging for dear life on the roof of the bus.  However, Korean drivers have a few advantages over their Indian counterparts.  Most notably, they have a first-rate national highway system with multiple lanes committed to traffic flow in one direction, which allows them to drive at much greater speeds, and really test the limits of their chariots, and their own skills in traffic.  Indian highways are more like country roads, with oncoming traffic in the second lane - if there is a second lane – and sometimes they aren’t even paved. 

The second key to bus drivers developing their racing skills in Korea is the loose traffic rules, or at least loose enforcement of those rules.  I have never seen a driver pulled over by the police in Korea, but I have seen and been party to all sorts of driving infractions.  For instance, stop lights appear to be optional, or possibly they are just ‘slow down’ lights here.  Another example is motorcycles, which appear to be allowed to transition between behaving like a pedestrian using sidewalks and crosswalks, and behaving like a vehicle by using the streets.  At crowded intersections motorcycles will hop up on the sidewalk, weave through the pedestrians in order to speed past the traffic and use the crosswalk to slip through the intersection, before hopping back onto the road to speed away. 

And the third advantage is the strange application of law in the case of an accident.  In that event, both parties share the blame, even if a driver is rear ended, the accident is still partially his fault, and he will have to pay part of the total damages.  This becomes even more important when one party is driving an expensive bus, and the other party is driving a cheap car.  I think this leads all drivers to drive a bit more defensively and especially around bus drivers, who take it as license to drive like they are kings of the road. 

Every bus driver I have had in Korea seems to be trying for their personal best time on the bus route.  I’ve had bus drivers pull into rest stops like they are pulling into pit row.  Tearing off the highway and not retreating from the accelerator until the final seconds before a curbside stop where I half expect to be met by a pit crew rapidly replacing the tires and speed fueling the bus, as groggy passengers stumble by headed for the restrooms. 

Others have even entered the bus terminals in this fashion, despite the hard 90 degree turns and pedestrian filled sidewalks they have to negotiate to do so.  On one memorable trip, there was a second driver in uniform seated in the first seat behind the driver.  I wasn’t sure if he was evaluating the driver or just catching a ride home, but our driver took the last few turns, and pulled into the bus station as if the only evaluation criteria was time. 

My return trip from Tongyeong was no different.  The clock was ticking from the moment we started up the on ramp to the highway, where our driver was hugging the bumper of the car in front of us as if he was trying to draft off the compact car.  As we reached the end of the on ramp, he crossed two lanes of traffic in order to slingshot past the car.  I began to write some notes for the blog but occasionally I would have to stop typing in order to hold on to my luggage so it didn’t fly into the aisle. 

I was sitting in the front row kitty corner to the driver, and felt like I was the in-car camera in a NASCAR race.  He’d roll up quick and close to vehicles in front of us before throwing the gear shift and laying on the throttle as he moved to make the pass.  He’d reach through the steering wheel to flip the turn signal, if he used it at all, and kept his other hand on the Brodie knob ready the crank the wheel fast if he ever needed to. 

As I jotted notes on his last amazing move, he jumped across two lanes of traffic in order to take a pigtail exit without letting up on the throttle, much like Sandra Bullock in ‘Speed.’ He roared across the rumble strips on the inside of the fork between the exit and highway, narrowly missing the reflectors and crash barrels, and leaving a trail of blazing horns in our wake from the disgruntled drivers he had just cut off. 

The exit took us onto another highway with three lanes and he weaved in and out of traffic across all three lanes like we were taking part in an action film chase scene.  He even rolled across all three lanes in the middle of a tunnel in order to us the far right lane to slip by slow traffic.

On the final stretch of highway, we flew across painted warnings indicating the recommended speed was 80km/h on this curvy stretch of highway through rolling hills and tunnels.  However, when I looked over the drivers shoulder, we were holding steady at 130 km/h as long as he could get around the Sunday drivers that were putting along at the recommended speed limit. 

He had an ‘easy pass’ in order to use the automated express lanes at highway tollgates, and it was always a close race between the rising gate and the windsheild as we raced through.  The pass also spoke to the driver each time he went through a toll.  I couldn't understand what it said, and most likely it was saying: "Thank you for using our service." But, I also think it may have been saying, “Please slow down." or "It is not legally possible for you to have arrived at this exit in such a short time." or “I’m sorry this pass is registered to a bus, not a Ferrari.”

I thought he would slow down once we were off the highway, but I was wrong, instead his speeds just felt more reckless, even if the lanes of the city grid were straighter.  And in typical fashion, stop lights were largely ignored.  However, he even pushed the limits here by using turning lanes in order to pass the traffic that had stopped at the light. 

At the first light, he flew past the stopped traffic and hit the light just as it turned green, making it a challenge to get around the traffic and merge back into traffic before we hit the curb on the other side of the intersection. 

At the second intersection, he did the same thing, clipping the shrubs along the side of the street, before he ran the red light.  Thankfully, his elevated position gave him a good view of the intersection and any approaching cars.  However, his speed did not leave him much time to react if there had been oncoming traffic.

I’m not sure if it was his personal best time, but he did manage to get us back to Busan twenty minutes ahead of schedule, on a ride that was supposed to take an hour and forty minutes.  As the passengers got off the bus they seemed much more thankful than I recall on previous journeys.  I don’t know if they were thanking him for getting us back so quickly, or for simply getting us back alive.  I know I was happy to be alive, and the neon lights of the love motels never looked so pretty. 

Buses parked in the Busan Terminal under the neon glow of the Love Motels.