An Evening in a Korean Police Station

In the previous post I had written about the accident I had happened to witness. The people who had taken the accident victim away had collected my phone number just in case they had some trouble in settling the case. They called late in the same night and told me that my number had been handed over to the police. I was requested to tell the truth about what I had seen that night. I replied in the affirmative and waited for the call from the police.

The call came at half past midnight. Someone said “Hello, do you speak Korean?” in fluent English, which in fact surprised me, and I said I didn’t. The man at the other end laughed aloud, again in fluent English, and hung up the phone! I waited for some more time and then dozed off. I had almost forgotten about the whole incident when two days later I received a call from a lady introducing herself as an interpreter. She described the accident and asked me if I had time to come over to the police station to testify as a witness. I said “of course I do, but now I am busy with work” then she asked me where I was working and my residential address. I gave her the details and agreed to go to the Dalseo-gu Police Station on the next day.

I had already heard about and seen by myself some of the methods and manners of the Korean police, like chasing down someone getting away in a car and bowing to him in salutation before taking him into custody, politely requesting, through the loudspeaker, those who had illegally parked their vehicles by the roadside to move them to a proper parking lot, turning up at the scenes of minor skirmishes among students just to capture the events on camera and leave quietly without interfering and taking those caught for drunken driving to a video show in the station to enlighten them about the adverse consequences of their act. So I was in the least nervous at the prospect of a visit to the police station. I was excited rather, at the opportunity.

Next evening, I left office early, at 7 pm. I received the call from the interpreter again on my way to the station. She received me at the station gate along with the officer in charge of the investigation. The policeman bore no resemblance whatsoever to the image of the typical policemen back home. As we proceeded to his seat the interpreter tried to reassure me that I wouldn’t be facing any difficulty on account of recording my witness statement. I smiled, nodding my appreciation. The station resembled a hi-tech office of some company with the state of the art electronic systems and PCs. Another person was giving some testimony at the adjacent table.

The officer started asking me questions about the accident through the interpreter. I was asked where I was staying, where I was working, where I was going that day at that time, what was my regular working time, and so on. He also asked me to mark my location at the time of the accident as well as the locations of the car and the victim. He had made detailed sketches of the accident site and had photographs from different angles. The same questions were repeated many times at intervals, might be a way of checking if I was contradicting myself. All the while he was typing his report in consultation with the interpreter. The procedure lasted about two hours, and I was feeling sleepy when finally he applied ink on my finger and obtained my thumb impression on certain documents. When he had almost finished he asked me to wait a little longer before wiping the ink. The interpreter asked me if I had kept a bank account. I said I did, but I couldn’t recall the account number. The officer then stood up and took out some money and gave it to me! He then made me sign the final document which was the receipt for the money I had been given.

"It is a minor token of appreciation from the Korean police for making use of your invaluable time." the interpreter told me as we prepared to leave!!