Thursday, June 07, 2007

The replacement driver

This sounds like it's either the premise of a Hong Kong or Korean action movie, or a Cyberpunk RPG scenario:

Cityscape: Seoul: Taking the wheel for a drunken stranger

"Speed is money in this business," said Hur, 43, who received 15,000 won, or $16, for driving his customer to his destination.

"You want to get as many orders as possible before dawn breaks," he said, after making the drive of 20 kilometers, or 12 miles. "I sleep in the day, work at night, six days a week."

Hur is a "replacement driver" who makes his living by delivering inebriated people and their cars home. There are tens of thousands of them operating in this hard-drinking metropolis of 10 million people. They go to work when Seoul streets blossom with neon signs and thoroughfares fill up with streams of cars returning home. They end their shifts well after the last neon lights blink out in the early morning mist curling up from the Han River.

1 comment:

Lori said...

8 things! You have been tagged.
marimbaandice.blogspot.com

Love, lolo