New traffic cameras are going up all the time, and it turns out that the signs alerting you to the traffic cameras are put up significantly later than the camera itself. The result being, I got another ticket. The same problem we had last year is still a problem. By the time we actually get the ticket (which goes to the U.S. and then back to here) it is a day or two before or after the due date.
This time, having learned from past experience that it's really nothing to worry about, I put off paying the ticket for a while. Well, to be honest, I actually forgot about it altogether. Until I got a notice in the mail that my car was going to be impounded in four days!! This seemed rather extreme and out of the blue, to say the least. It turns out that Koreans have greatly increased their follow-through for traffic violations. I asked a Korean friend to confirm the translation of the ticket and she did. She also said that this kind of ticket is "a little serious" and has to be paid at the police station, not the bank as we normally would. Yikes!
On the advice of my brother who previously lived here, I first went to the U.S. Army police station. They took a look and said the reason I got that notice was that for some reason Korea doesn't recognize my car as a foreign car. It turns out there had been some mix-up in the registration of my very American car. It's a Toyota and no self-respecting Korean would be caught dead driving a Japanese car. I shouldn't have gotten such a notice, and even if the Korean police had attempted to impound my car, first of all they wouldn't be able to find it because the address associated with the car is a U.S. address and secondly, they would have just contacted the American Army police anyway since I am American. So that was no problem. However, I did still need to pay the ticket. Some very nice Korean-American policemen gave me directions to the nearest local police station and off I went.
Crime is extremely low here in Korea and as a result the police stations are quite small. I circled the block a bit, but finally found the station tucked away behind some other government building. One of the younger officers spoke very good English and first explained that I could pay the ticket there but it would involve a lot of paperwork so it would be better to go to the bank. So I asked about the impound notice. That involved a good bit of discussion and a few phone calls (maybe to the Army police?) but I was finally given an account number and told to show that to the bank in order to pay the ticket. So off to the bank I went.
At the bank the receptionist took a look at my papers and new account number and told me that everything looked fine. I got in line and eventually paid my ticket. As I was leaving the bank the receptionist told me, "actually you could have just come here, I don't know why you went to the police station." (!!) So a whole lot of hassle for a problem that really wasn't a problem and for a ticket that was only about $35. I should probably figure out the registration issue at some point, but that will involve the Army bureaucracy and will take forever. I'm not feeling super motivated to spend a whole day in that black hole. Better to just try to avoid getting another ticket. However, seeing as it's a foreign country with traffic rules no foreigner ever seems to quite grasp, the chances of that seem rather slim!
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