Why I Haven’t Driven in 8 Years

I finally got my driver’s license in Korea after living here for six years! I’m so relieved and happy to finally have a license again. Buckle up for the explanation and story of why I got my Korean license. Next time, I’ll explain the process of actually taking the tests.

First of all, I got my permit when I was 15, so that’s the age I learned to drive. I went to driver’s ed classes in Tennessee and got my license at 16 like most of my friends. I was so glad when I finally got a car because until then, I had to wait at school or where my mom worked (at a hospital) so that I could be driven home. Meaning a few hours of waiting around until I got to be home. Once I got a car, I could just drive myself home at 3pm and relax.

In most places in the US, you need a car to get anywhere. Once I moved to Japan and then Korea, I really loved not driving. I liked taking the bus or subway or taxi or walking wherever I needed to go. I preferred it to driving and was glad not to have a car, because after about 5 years of driving in the US, I was sick of it.

Driving to school my senior year of high school, my commute was about 40 minutes sometimes. My university was about three or more hours from my parents’ houses. Driving within my university cities wasn’t that fun, either, and it was mostly a chore. And it meant having to give up a coveted parking spot with the risk of not finding one when I got back. I liked listening to music in the car, but that was about the only thing I enjoyed.

I also started off on a weird foot with driving. I accidentally bumped into a guy parked behind me at school (on field day, when the parking lot was jam packed) because I was trying to put my reverse lights on and let him know I couldn’t get out. It turned into a huge fiasco and made me scared of driving. I also almost got voted “Worst Driver” for my senior yearbook, even though no one had really ever ridden in my car and I was a pretty good driver overall. It was a lot of bullies ganging up on me and I was humiliated and angry.

Also - police cars in the US actively try to give out tickets so they follow people and hide behind things to catch people speeding. Thankfully, Korea uses cameras to catch people speeding or parking illegally, so as long as you obey the rules, you’ll mostly be fine and never actually run into a police officer. I think the threat of potentially being pulled over really scared me as a driver in the US. I was pulled over a few times, and thankfully never got a ticket, but I was a nervous driver after each of those times.

My first car was a white Pontiac given to me by my stepmom when she upgraded and got a new car for herself. It was pretty old and back then we had no GPS in the car, no back-up cameras, no heated seats, and no bluetooth or unlimited access to music like we do now. The first GPS I got was one I asked for as a graduation gift when I graduated high school. I was so bad at directions, which only added to my troubles. I had to print out directions on MapQuest and even just learning the roads around my house were confusing.

I named my Pontiac Alice (yes, because of Twlight) and a lot of things on it broke or malfunctioned. I had to change a tire on it once and thought, “Hey, I did a good job and fixed my car!” and then about a week later, I was parked in a staff spot getting groceries into my dorm room and when I went to go get my car to move it to the student lot, it completely died. I got parking tickets on it the next day and a tow truck took it to a lot where they only offered us $100 for it.

After that, I dove an old volvo of my mom’s, and that thing was worse. It had no A/C most of the time and once I was driving home for the weekend and got stuck in traffic in 100°F heat on the highway for hours. Suffice it to say - I hated driving after that.

Even when people told me that I’d need a car after having a baby in Korea, I laughed them off, thinking I could get by with taking the bus still if I needed to go anywhere. I was very wrong. My husband has his car with him most of the time and drives to other cities a lot for work. On the weekends, he sometimes works or plays saxophone in concerts and goes early to set up and has to break down chairs, etc. afterwards. I’d love to go to all of his concerts with Sejun, but Sejun has to nap and being out with him for hours with no way to go home is not ideal if I go with Junkyu.

Sejun’s car seat is usually in our apartment because my husband keeps lots of boxes in his car for work, so every time we want to go somewhere with Sejun, we have to carry down the heavy car seat, install it, adjust it, and then put Sejun in it and leave. It’s such a hassle and sometimes it’s dangerous because we are in a full parking garage and I don’t want him wandering off while we are busy with the car seat or other baggage. It would be so nice to just have the car seat already installed in a car so I could get him in the car and just leave.

I spent most of my first few years in Korea doing Korean classes and getting my permanent residency. I had an American license, but it didn’t allow me to drive in Korea. Before that, I spent two years in Japan and didn’t drive. I didn’t want to, nor did I need to. I biked to work and took trains everywhere else. Plus, they drive on the left-side of the road, and I knew it would be hard to adjust.

My American license expired when I was in Japan, and they let me renew it online once. After that, they said I’d have to renew it in person. Meaning, I’d have to physically go to Alabama where my license was issued, and I didn’t have a permanent address in the US anymore. I decided to let it expire and to just get my Korean license instead of exchanging my American one like a lot of people do.

Alabama licenses are accepted by the Korean DMV, along with some other states, but the process of getting it exchanged is tedious and it only lasts until your American license expires. And you physically have to hand over your American driver’s license, so that means you’d have to pick it back up to go back and drive in the States.

I decided it was finally time to get my Korean license after so many years of not driving. Whenever my husband and I go on road trips, he always gets sleepy when driving and has to pull over to nap. I thought it’d be so much better if I could also drive and take over for an hour or two. He also doesn’t like driving places on the weekend since he drives for work so much, but he said if I had my license, I could drive us to the mall or somewhere fun with Sejun on weekends and he’d be more up for going out.

A friend of mine got her license about two years ago and she had a really hard time and it made me nervous to even try. The process was made more difficult a few years back and the tests were changed. The Korean government wanted to make it harder for people so that new drivers cause less accidents. The longer I put it off, the more nervous I became. I thought I’d definitely fail a few times and didn’t want to waste all of that time and effort.

The Daejeon DMV is really far from my house, as well. It’s a 30-minute ride by car (more with traffic) and an hour and a half or more by bus. Sejun goes to daycare, but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to have time to get there and back before time to pick him up. You can’t really get your license in one day, either. It takes at least two or three days, and that’s a lot of time for me to travel there, take tests, and travel back. And the prospect of failing and having to go even more times than that was daunting.

Eventually, though, I did decide to start the process in earnest. Next time, I’ll tell you all about the actual process of getting my license!