A law - really?

Every morning on the way to the subway, I have to cross a really busy road that has a flashing red light at the pedestrian crossing. After two years of near misses and the regular temptation to kick big dents in the doors of shiny black cars with black windows as they speed through the crosswalk without a care, I asked three of my Korean colleagues who drive what a flashing red light meant to them. In Canada, it means STOP and proceed through the crosswalk if there is no one there. Only one of my colleagues said that the Korean law was the same. The other colleagues weren't sure.

This is a country where speeding motorcycles on the sidewalk are the norm, so it should come as no surprise that there are rules that no one follows. I happen to think that if you have traffic laws that are not enforced, the lack of enforcement carries over into other situations.

Last Saturday, I was walking down the road that divides the Yongsan base in half. There are several flashing yellow lights and a set of flashing red lights that NO ONE even pretends to obey. Now to be fair, there seemed to be no reason for this flashing red light (perhaps another issue). However, this has got to have a bad influence on those lights that should be obeyed - like the one up the road where a lot of pedestrians are actually in danger.