Japanese tourists in Myeongdong look at a Japanese-language guidebook on Korea.

Song Woong-ki, The Korea Herald, 3/26/2010 – Two days ago, Motoko Watanabe and her husband arrived in Seoul from their hometown in Shizuoka prefecture, Japan. Since hearing of close friends’ pleasant experiences in Seoul, they figured the short trip to Korea would give them the most bang for their buck.

But what was supposed to be an affordable three days of sightseeing and shopping around the popular shopping districts Myeong-dong and Namdaemun, turned into a budget buster the middle-class newlyweds did not anticipate.

Did they go overboard gorging on sumptuous hanwoo while impulsively buying Yonsama socks and Louis Vuitton handbags?

Hardly.

According to Motoko, the couple spent a third of their travel budget on taxis. “We don’t know our way around so it feels as though we’ve been wasting money and spending more than necessary on taxis,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like we’re going in circles when we’re in cabs.”

She’s not alone in her gripes about taxis.

A recent survey conducted by the Korea Tourism Organisation shows that the number of calls made by disgruntled tourists in 2009 saw a 13.4 per cent increase from the previous year.

Of the complaints, difficulties while shopping and disputing costs of taxi fares topped the list with 32.5 per cent and 17.5 per cent of the total 468 complaints filed.

“Our experience was pleasant up until we walked out of the key attractions around the city,” Watanabe said. “It was when we hopped into a taxi and began getting around town that our trip became unpleasant. We really feel as though we spent twice the amount of our travel budget, and I hate it. In their defense, the drivers just say they don’t understand what we’re saying, but I find it personally inconvenient. It’s made me disdainful of the drivers here.”

When asked about taxi scams, Baek Ki-chun, 62, a taxi driver, was quick to defend his profession.

“That was only during the old days when you saw drivers hanging around the airport looking for people to rip off,” he said. “Nowadays, we don’t do stuff like that to tourists, because we care very much about giving the best impression possible of our country to foreign guests when they visit.”

Baek, a 15-year veteran, conceded later that there might be some who take advantage of tourists. “Look, in countries like Japan, you don’t see drivers committing such shameful acts because their drivers get all the proper employee benefits and a respectable salary, regardless of how many passengers they get per day,” he said.

“Here in Korea, they tried to implement something similar when DJ (former President Kim Dae-jung) was around, but it never happened because people started saying drivers would just slack off without making their rounds, so the government decided to scrap the whole idea.

“The only thing we have to rely on is getting as many passengers in a day as possible in order to meet our quota. So I can understand when some drivers get desperate enough to commit disgraceful acts like that.” – read more at Asia News Network…