`A lucky day` for designated drivers

“It was a very lucky day for Kim in a while. The rickshaw puller who earned 80 jeon, currency used during the Joseon Dynasty of Korea, had quince liquor on a rainy winter day. He came home with a bowl of beef soup for his wife who had been coughing for about a month. His sick wife gobbled the soup and died that evening with her eyes rolled back. Tears welled up in Kim’s eyes after he watched his dead wife’s tearful eyes.” It is an excerpt from “A Lucky Day,” a short story written by Hyeon Jin-geon in the 1920s, which describes a rickshaw puller who lives from hand to mouth.

These days, there exist designated drivers whose lives are similar to Kim. They can barely make 60,000 won (52.63 U.S. dollars) even if they luckily serve five to six customers and make 100,000 won (87.7 dollars) per night because they have to pay a 20 percent fee to the company, insurance fee, program fee, and fare to return home. Some ill-intended owners make money from drivers by charging various fees to them. If they get a customer who live in a remote area or a not-so-profitable customer, they make nothing that day. In a bad day, they have to serve awkward customers who are so intoxicated as to use violence or who think female drivers as their prostitutes.

A 47-year-old designated driver who was driving a luxury Maserati for actress Lee Ji-ah hit a police car Saturday evening. A Maserati costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and Korea has only around a hundred Maseratis. Although the driver was insured, the maximum coverage is 30 million won (26,320 dollars). The driver should pay the excess for repair. Drivers are not paid more even if they drive an expensive imported car. The driver said when heard the bang, he first thought of his family.

Designated drivers service, which first emerged in the 1990s, has prevented car accidents from drunk driving and created jobs for low-income households since the 1998 Asian financial crisis. According to the Korean Designated Drivers Association, Korea has 150,000 to 200,000 designated drivers and 500,000 to 600,000 customers use the service every night. Unfortunately, however, there are no laws or standard fees on the service. For the sake of the drivers’ rights and customers’ safety, the service needs to be out of the dead zone. Hundreds of thousands designated drivers hit the road hoping for “a lucky day” tonight as well.

Editorial Writer Park Yong (parky@donga.com)