1. Theft is like a four-letter word. It seems like no one ever steals anything.
I regularly walk down the street and see a number of bikes, motorcycles, and mopeds that are just sitting alone with no lock, ready to be snatched up by anyone who would like to ride away on them. I have heard of one foreign person having his bike stolen, but that seemed like a very rare incident. On several occasions, I've forgotten my bike lock in a coat pocket, only to realize this after arriving at my destination. Did I truck it back home so I could lock my bike up? Nope. I'd just put it in a bike rack and come back many hours later...to find that it hadn't been touched.
But there's a better example. Last September, Daegu was experiencing Korea's obnoxious monsoon season. On a day when it wasn't raining, I went to dinner at a restaurant near my school, and accidentally left my umbrella there. In the dear old ATL, that umbrella would have been gone in a flash. I thought, "It has been raining hard all day .Someone will have taken it already, but I'll go look anyway." I wentback to the restaurant the following night to find my umbrella exactly where I left it. Since this is what my umbrellas usually looked like in September after 2 minutes outside in a monsoon...
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| #monsoonproblems |
...it's extra surprising that no one took it!
2. Everyone leaves really valuable things lying around and no one seems to care.
Smartphones and phablets in Korea can easily cost in the USD $800-1000+ range. You'd never know it, though, given that Koreans are more likely than anyone else in the entire world to replace their phones before their contracts expire (as this article points out). Anyway, people leave their phones lying around, along with their tablets, wallets, and all sorts of other things. When I was at the airport en route to the Philippines, I was sitting near an ATM that a Korean man had used. He walked off and left his wallet -- which was visibly stuffed FULL of cash and cards -- for quite a while. I watched the ATM for some time, and was trying to figure out where the info desk/lost items kiosk was so that I could turn it in before someone took it, when he finally returned, looking not in the least panicked.
If I were to leave my wallet lying around in the Atlanta airport for 38 seconds...POOF! #nowitsgone
3. You're on Candid Camera...all the time!
My theory is that the crime rate is so low because CCTV is everywhere. There are cameras on every stoplight, in even the smallest of shops, and randomly on most streets, too. If someone were to walk off with something, it'd probably only be a matter of minutes before they were caught because they would be seen by 17 different cameras by the time they got down the street.
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| This is right outside a church in Jeonju. |
Until next time,
WTRJ
