A combination of alcohol, youth misbehavior, and an eight-lane avenue led netizens to call for the execution of two young men. The cause of the outcry was a game in which the two men literally played in traffic, sitting in both the east and west bound lanes of one of the busiest roads in Seoul and competing to see who could stop cars from passing for a longer period of time. The loser was supposed to have had to pay for drinks, but the arrival of the police cut the competition short.
While none of the many drivers held up by the men seems to have acted to remove them from the road, netizens were unanimous in their calls for stiff legal punishment. Another target of online displeasure was the police, who took twenty minutes to respond to the incident.
From SBS:
Immature Twenty-year-olds Brings Gangnam Avenue to a Standstill
On eight-lane Gangnam Avenue in Seoul, a man blocked traffic after placing a chair in the middle of the road and sitting down nonchalantly.
On the opposite side of the street, another man sat down and waited in an identical fashion. This situation went on for approximately thirty minutes.
According to a witness, “They felt brave enough to wave to passing cars. When cars honked at them, they would just wave them by and laugh amongst each other…”
The men were apparently playing a kind of game, where the person who was able to block traffic the longest would not have to pay for drinks. Someone who seemed to be a friend of the men even came into the street to give a bottle of water and encouragement.
Having lost their patience with the men’s obstruction, bystanders called the police. However, it took the police twenty minutes to respond after the initial complaint.
As the police arrived, the two men called off their wager and attempted to flee. Police managed to arrest one man, age 23.
A detective from the Gangnam police station reported that, “after eating, five to six friends decided that whoever among them could block traffic longer and go through three warnings would win the game and not have to pay for alcohol…”
Police announced that they would charge the men with criminal obstruction of traffic for willfully stopping the flow of vehicles. The accused could receive up to ten years in prison and 15 million won ($13,285 USD); typically, those who are convicted for obstruction of traffic only pay a fine.
Comments from SBS:
화이팅:
Execute them. In any case, they will be useless to society. They are potential criminals.
등대지기:
Crush these saekki under a 25-ton dump truck. That’s the only way to get rid of bastards like this.
수리321:
Two years in prison and 12 million won ($10,628 USD) should be appropriate…
첫사랑사수:
Forcing other people to be inconvenienced to determine who pays for drinks??? Don’t kill good people unjustly, start with guys like these…
스카이:
A cancer on society, make this human trash go to prison and eat some rice and beans [Note: Korean prisons are infamous for feeding 콩밥 (rice and beans) to inmates. The rice is considered distasteful by many Koreans]
벌꿀오소리:
ssibal saekki, have them play their game on an expressway, the cars will just crush them
아이구야:
If someone like that was to get run over no one would bat an eye, if they had caused an accident they would have just denied everything and run away
표우량:
Up to no good…where did he spend those past twenty-three years of his life?…
sayi:
It took the police twenty minutes to get there after the call came in?… It takes twenty minutes for a police car to get moving near Gangnam Avenue? What a great country we live in. It wouldn’t take five minutes for a tow truck to have gotten there
에마왓슨:
If it was America someone would have shot and killed the guys… if it was Saudi Arabia they would whip him fifty times…
Joey-Joe:
The world is wide and full of idiots.. I feel really bad for the mothers who call those guys sons, who gave birth to them and ate their seaweed soup tsk tsk tsk [Note: it is a tradition in Korea for nursing mothers to eat seaweed soup to regain energy]
푸른하늘:
Send them to the army again… ke ke that’s the right answer… and don’t let them rise above the rank of private first class even after a year and a half
happy love me:
In Gangnam they all just waited or went around.. In Busan they wouldn’t have waited one second before bashing their heads in..
최게바라:
It looks like they should forever be forced to wear that plastic chair around their body
꽁띠:
20 minutes… it looks like the police were sleeping somewhere.. Make them pay a stiff fine!!! 15 million won
From the Chosun Ilbo:
kwwt:
Pathetic youth, can’t tell the difference between idiocy and bravery. Guys like those can’t do anything by themselves, but get a few of them together and they jump around like grasshoppers. Make them pay the maximum fine
yj9119:
Low quality people! Spend that time studying. If you’ve got time for that you should be spending it meditating inside. What do you do for a living? Pity their mothers and fathers… how can they look at themselves tsk tsk tsk
ghl49:
Lawlessness like this could only happen in South Korea.. Put them in prison and make them eat rice and beans for two years. That’s the only way to straighten them out…
mpmhm:
The world is coming to an end! End I tell you! Are these people for real? Did they attend the classes in morals and ethics in school? What were they learning?
valley48:
Wow, we really have some great people in our country. They just waited and accepted all of that.. I think maybe in other countries a driver would have responded to this kind of foolishness by pushing them with their car. Thanks to these guys everyone’s commute gets longer, the criminals should be made to pay 100,000 won to each person who was inconvenienced because of them
