Police Action

This is the first time we've seen any police action since we've been here. Usually we just see the police driving around or sleeping on park benches but yesterday on my way to work I saw these 2 cops trying to deal with a drunk woman on the side of the road. That green bottle is Soju which is a very popular 20% drink of hard alcohol. The police officers stayed with her for over 1 hour and did nothing more than you see in the picture. At one point the officer helped her light a cigarette as she was yelling at the top of her lungs. We were in our school on the 4th floor with the windows closed and I could still hear her.


In Canada she would have been off the street in 2 minutes and would have received a 24 hour luxury stay at "hotel" jail. She might even have been charged with 'drunk and disorderly' or whatever that charge is. I don't know how this ended because I got bored and I had to go teach. I think they waited until she was sober and then went on their way.

South Korean Police

Oh no, it's "5-0" in the park! Nevermind, they're sleeping.
We haven't seen too many police officers around Changwon but the few that we have seen look more like security guards. They are very young and they don't carry firearms, so Angèle and I are guessing that they are cadets and that they use cadets a lot. The police officers in the cruiser looked to be older and probably do carry firearms but we couldn't tell since they were in the car and I didn't ask if he was packing heat.

We have not seen one police officer pull anyone over on traffic violations, which would explain why everyone drives like maniacs and treats red lights like Yield/Stop signs. We also noticed that taxis have a lot of radar equipment and we think that they have radar detectors which might be part of that problem. We also found a police station by luck but we think its a community police station since it was closed during the weekend and they used a bike lock to lock up the doors.

To view larger images, just click on the pictures.