That's not your parking space.

I had a 1992 Hyundai Elantra manual speed transmission.

 

I know. You're impressed, right? The car was eleven years old, but might just as well have been a bar of soap because no Korean would even have bought this product of blood, sweat, and kimchee. Sure, you might have been able to find eleven year old cars around farms, the poorer neighborhoods, or just got missed, literally, by that little old ajumma who drives her Hyundai to The Church of the Neon Red Cross on Sunday mornings.

 

I had three requirements in a motorized vehicle whilst car shopping:

1. It had to be domestic. They are the easiest and cheapest to fix.

2. It had to inexpensive. Mine put me back $400.

3. It had to be maroon. Ok, it was maroon to begin with, which is awesome.

 

Parking my vintage Hyundai was a problem in the neighborhood. You see, I didn't know this at first, but Koreans actually own the public land in front of their Soviet-style, Eastern European, dog box apartments. That's right. The DAKs think they own the parking places in front of their apartments. A lot of ajosshis drill chain links into the street, attach a ghetto-style concrete block, and have that block sit there guarding ajosshi's parking space whilst he wastes his time at work working for a soulless chabol in a mind numbing, low pay, thankless, unskilled irritating, Sisyphean hell that is the Korean office.

 

So, one day I parked my maroon vintage Hyundai in front of my apartment building. I left my phone number on the dash, as everyone does, because we are all friends, right?  ^^ I open up a 40oz. and start lining up my side dishes and rice for dinner. I get a frantic phone call before I can eat. I answer the phone, and right away this ajosshi is screaming my license plate number over the phone. I really can't make out a damn thing he is saying as: a) this DAK was screaming into a cell phone; and b) I could also hear him both through the back window and through the closed, bolted hollow steel door.

 

I go down to the car and there is a mid-30s ajosshi standing in front of my lovely Hyundai. A small door, smaller than a normal door is open behind him. OK, got it. He is the downstairs neighbor and I am too close to his door perhaps.

 

"No. No, foreigner. Please understand my culture. This parking space in front my apartment on the public street is my parking space."

 

"I live here," I retorted.

 

"So do I," he replied.

 

And with that, I smile, shrugged my shoulders, and went upstairs, cracking another 40 from the fridge.

 

Drunk. I slept. In the morning, there were key marks all down the side of my car. That stupid motherfucker. It was so painfully obvious that it was him. At least wait a few days before vandalizing my car; it makes it seem so much more random.

 

I was pissed off, but it was not all that surprising. I figured he'd want to have it out one way or another. Make a Korean angry or upset, and that anger will ferment and get ripe, just like right before some Korean goes batshit crazy on society. Fermented and overripe Korean inner hatred for all things.

 

I would have to retaliate. But I would wait a few days. After a late night of drinking in the university district, I stumbled home. As the apartment came into view, I saw his car parked in the disputed DMZ of our shared shitty back alleyway. I looked for something to scratch his car. What I found was a large pointy rock. I pressed it into the hood of his car and gouged. To my surprise, without much effort the pointy rock drove a deep groove into the hood. I thought about how cheap that car must have been to be made so pliable.

 

I never heard from that man again. I guess he looked at his Hyundai and looked at my Hyundai, and realized that my car was the unwanted orphan of the Please Understand My Car Culture Wars.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reconstruction Of Flight 214 Crash

If you can make out anything that stupid DAK pilot says besides 214 and I'll buy you a beer.

http://www.break.com/video/reconstruction-of-flight-214-crash-2491768

Korea's Unique Please Understand My Driving Culture

"Run you over, or run you over town, it makes no difference to me."    
    
I saw a guy get hit and killed in Bucheon...at the time it was Pucheon. The Koreans fucked that up, too. Ok...it is on the line #1 to Incheon.

There is a big main street that is perpendicular to the Pucheon subway station. Four lanes going towards the station  and four lanes going away. I was just hanging around the area, as I had lived in Won-mi dong years before. I walked through the main shijang, looked at the old apartment. I was walking back to the subway station at the time of the accident.

  This ajosshi sees a break in the traffic and he decides to run across all eight lanes of the street. So, he's running across the barren street, but waaaaayyyyyy down the street on the other side in a far lane is one of those little blue vans they have, the kind that you'd just love to write "FREE CANDY" or "FREE (SHITTY KPOP BAND OF THE MONTH") TICKETS on the side then start hanging out in front of schools.


Ajosshi keeps a steady run across the street, and a blue minivan Komurderist (Korean + Motorist) keeps jamming down his side. Standing in front of it all were 30 to 40 people, maybe, waiting for various buses at a bus stop. We all collectively watched as the ajosshi ran directly into the path of his speeding death. The blue minivan Komurderist never slowed down, never deviated from his path; he just ran into that poor ajoshhi, who flew up two meters in the air before slamming down to the pavement on his back, one of his arms reaching to the sky like you see boxers who get knocked out do, before dying in front of us all.

Some people screamed. Some people cried. But this gave way to a general rage at those who had seen this guy mowed down and killed. The common people all began screaming and yelling at the driver who had given us all a refresher course on please understand my driving culture.

I don't know what happened after that. Being a person of a sensitive nature, I didn't want to be amongst the Korea horde at this time. Those in the crowd fell within three different types of Koreans: those filled with the rage of 3000 years of Please Understand My Japanese Culture on Your Peninsula...and Women; those who just wanted to look at the death and car damage, not feeling at all for the poor dead ajosshi or his wife and 1.3 kids; and girls crying, grapping their oppas and pathologically repeating "Awe toe kay!" 

If I can give all my readers one piece of advice and they would follow it, it is this:
Never be the first or the last person in the crosswalk....ever.

And never jaywalk. You just give some komurderist a free pass to introduce you to their please understand my driving culture, then probably send a bill to your family before your corpse can be repatriated.

Be safe, dear brethren...be safe.

I'm going to go ahead and call this one.

The pilot will claim that the glide slope was not functioning. It will be proved that he lied and the glide slope will be found to have been working fine. So, 2 died and 61 were hurt because ajosshi didn't want to follow the glide slope?!