Is Driving in South Korea difficult?

Taking the Car on a Creepy Getaway

BY JL COPELAND

For background music as you read this one here’s a song I like to put on when I imagine escaping from it all. Yeah, Australia would do.

If you just want something to put a smile on your face, here’s a bonus track. For me, this version of I Get Around by The Beach Boys never fails:

When the guy starts clapping… gets me every time.

Speaking of getaways, we recently spent a weekend in Gangneung on the east coast of Korea. It’s a three-hour drive from Seoul.

Is driving in South Korea difficult?

Driving in Korea is never fun.

My top complaint about Korean drivers is their use of hazard lights. My Korean friends say that they put their hazards on to ‘say sorry’ to the driver behind for some transgression.

Oh, it goes way beyond ‘saying sorry.’

They appear to believe that when they hit the hazards, it’s like when Mario grabs a star. The music starts playing and voila, they’re invincible!

Red light?

Dee dee dee dee-dee-dee dee dee-dee…

Missed the exit on the expressway and need to reverse fifty metres into oncoming traffic?

Dee dee dee dee-dee-dee dee dee-dee…

About to skittle a walking school bus of first-graders?

Dee dee dee dee-dee-dee dee dee-dee…

Imagine Yoshi is a Hyundai Sonata, and the koopers are other motorists, and you get the idea.

Can I drive in South Korea as a tourist?

Sure, you’ll need your original licence and an International Driving Permit, but that’s the easy part, the hard part is the driving.

I remember when I visited Italy after five years of driving in Korea. I was nervous. Italian drivers have a bad reputation in the UK. Would I get out of Rome in our rental car in one piece?

Compared to driving in Korea? A doddle. A walk in the playpark.

Now, don’t get me wrong, you may now be thinking,

Is it a good idea to rent a car in Seoul?

You’ll be fine. It’s not horrendous. The problem is adapting to the different driving styles. And cultural differences feed into these styles. Cultural differences often rely heavily on stereotypes, but hey, to slightly misquote George Clooney in Up in the Air,

“Sometimes I stereotype. It’s faster.”

In the UK, the driving test is pretty rigorous. We have to be checking our mirrors and show we are constantly aware of motorists around us. Not all, but most drivers on UK roads are fairly generous when it comes to letting people out, giving way etc.

In Korea, the test is much easier.

In fact, to get a Korean driving licence, the mandatory education period totals just 13 hours. Three hours of safety lessons for the written exam, four hours of closed-circuit functional test training and six hours of actual road driving.

For many Koreans, the time between beginning to learn to drive and receiving their licence can be measured in weeks, sometimes days.

Aside from the point about hazard lights above, my four main observations from my seventeen years of driving in Korea (or sitting alongside Korean drivers) are as follows:

• You could probably remove the side and rear-view mirrors from most Koreans cars and it would take some time for them to notice.
• The same with indicators/turn signals.
• For Koreans, the only road that matters is the road twenty metres in front.
• As a rule, Koreans do not let people in (or out), even if it’s not going to slow them down by doing so.

Again, these are generalisations, not all Koreans drive like this in 2026, but a hell of a lot do. My cod-cultural analysis of this is that, in short, connections are important to Koreans.

If a Korean doesn’t know you, you might as well be dead to them.

To use indicators or mirrors or yield/let drivers in/out would be to help other people around them, people they are not acquainted with, so why would they want to do that?

Be prepared for people changing lanes in front of you with no indicators.

Be prepared to wait, and wait AND WAIT if you’re stuck and need someone to let you in (or out) during heavy traffic.

I have on numerous occasions seen someone holding up a long queue of traffic because no one in the next lane will let that one car in.

So yeah, if you’ve got a short temper when it comes to motoring, driving in Korea is probably not for you.

You may scoff at my idea that culture could have an impact on transportation behavior. But this has happened before, with Korean airline pilots.

I should point out that I’m not saying UK drivers are some sort of motoring gods, or conversely that Koreans are lethal behind the wheel. But I’ll just point out that the UK’s road traffic fatality rate is half that of Korea’s.

Korea also has the highest road traffic fatality rate among the OECD countries.

Again, don’t panic, but do be aware of what to expect.

A couple of other questions I often get asked:

Can I turn right on a red light in South Korea?

Yes, as long as you do not cross a pedestrian crossing that’s on ‘green man.’ Although in practice this is more of a guideline than a rule, so if you’re a pedestrian, ALWAYS look both ways before you cross.

Is Korea left or right hand drive?

It’s left hand drive, they drive on the right, and 99%+ of cars are automatics.

If you have any questions about driving in Korea, feel free to ask in the comments section below.

But back to our trip.

Traffic was down to a crawl for a good hour or more. We limped into a service station, bursting for the bathrooms.

Unfortunately, everyone else had the same idea. The place was packed. We had to wait in line for a parking space.

There were more lines inside, this time for the men’s toilets. By the way some of the guys in the line were talking, you would have thought the world had come to an end.

I wanted to point out to them that the women almost always have to queue, so, jeez, man up, when a guy in his seventies went scurrying by with his pepper (as Koreans call it) already out. He cut the whole line. No one wanted to stop him in case he asked them to hold it.

He prostrated himself against a vacated urinal, and even I felt his relief. It reminded me of something I saw about the average man’s top 3 priorities at different stages of their life:

I’m clearly advanced for my age. Love a good toilet, me.

We made it our destination and checked out the local market. This market was famous for its deep-fried squid. We topped up our trans-fats and headed for the accommodation.

My wife had said the accommodation was cheap.

As we closed in on our digs for the weekend, I began to see why. We appeared to be driving through an industrial estate. The place was a ghost town. An assortment of abandoned vehicles lined both sides of the road.

I began to wonder what had happened to the drivers.

We got to the place, a two-storey house on an isolated cul-de-sac in the middle of nowhere. The cul-de-sac was surrounded by a parsnip field, that I presumed was fertilised by the corpses of the drivers of those empty vehicles.

Across the road was a recycling and car-crushing yard. Understandable; they needed a way to get rid of the vehicles before anyone asked any questions.

My nerves were not helped by the eerie dolls and sculptures in the gardens of the houses on the quiet cul-de-sac. A couple of curtains twitched, but I still didn’t see anyone.

The guy at the scrapyard was staring at me. I calmly suggested to my wife that we get the hell inside.

I turned out it wasn’t just the creepy-ass location; it was also cheap because we’d be sharing the house with two other parties that night. The owner greeted us and immediately laid out the list of rules for use.

Near-silence seemed to be close to the top of said list, judging by the ugly looks the kids were attracting as they explored the place.

I explored, too. I came across one of the other guests, fag in his mouth, taking a leak in a neighbour’s flower bed. There was an available bathroom not twenty yards away from him, but priorities, I guess.

Later, the owner was remonstrating with the same guy because he kept leaving the front door open whenever he went to smoke. He claimed he couldn’t remember the entry code.

The code? 5678.

Our rooms could generously be described as bare. The house? Frigid.

The other two parties consisted entirely of men in their fifties or sixties. Along with the iron bunk beds, the severe owner and the sombre atmosphere, it felt less happy holiday home and more halfway house (for sex offenders).

We didn’t hang about and headed for the beach. There was a snazzy Filipino restaurant I wanted to go to, but before that we took a stroll along the sand.

It was Baltic-cold, but of course the kids were interested in the surf.

By some error of planning and logistics, The Boy only had the trousers he was wearing and no spare. Neither of them had any alternative footwear, either. So strict instructions were given to keep clear of the water.

Did they pay attention?

Alas.

They played the running up to the waves and then running back just-in-time game, before, inevitably, they mistimed it.

First, their shoes got soaked.

We bollocked them.

Did they stop?

Of course they effing didn’t—at least not until The Boy’s pants were piss-wet through.

I didn’t care. We were still going to that restaurant, no matter what. He could stay in those pants for the rest of the night. You play stupid games; you win stupid prizes.

We wrung out their clothes. Then I told The Boy to stick close behind me as we entered the restaurant and prayed nobody noticed.

Fortunately, the waiter, a little befuddled at having to deal with a foreigner, overlooked The Boy squelching along behind as he showed us to our table.

It was worth it, turns out Filipino food is dee-lish. Although the fried banana is overrated; stick to fried squid (your cardiologist will thank you).

The next day we stopped by one of the large superstores, HomePlus (or Hopeless, as I prefer, considering the amount of times they cock up our home deliveries), to get the kids some dry duds.

Are women allowed to drive in South Korea?

Of course, but as in other countries, they are often looked down on.

The mart had a floor of ‘women’s parking spaces.’ Each of these is extra-large, roomy enough for a Humvee. Despite being a man (you at the back, stop laughing) I always park in these.

Why?

I’m itching for a fight. I can’t wait for someone to try to explain the thinking behind these patronising parking places.

Inside the mart, while the kids fought with my wife about their God-given right to choose K-Pop Demon Hunter sneakers, I sensibly wandered off.  At the end of the sandal aisle, I was shocked to find this crackhead:

Opposite him were these two, all sweetness and light:

I swear one of them winked.

Creepy place, Gangneung.

How about you? What’s the creepiest place you’ve ever been to? Hit me with a reply.

It wasn’t the most memorable holiday, but I was glad we went. The Girl turned eleven last week, and it’s getting harder and harder to convince her to go anywhere with us without a screaming match.

Friends are her priority now. Before we know it, it will be boys, and then the world will really come to an end.

Seriously, they grow up fast. If you have kids (if you don’t, you lucky b*stard), enjoy them while you can, before they slip through your fingers. It’ll happen sooner than you think.

But that’s life, I guess. Your priorities change.

Speaking of which, I’m bursting for a p…

Speak soon.

JL

PS: Speaking of cardiologists, I had a helluva scary time the last time I saw mine. Check it out on the blog here.

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