Fwd: [TEPFall2005] strange stuff on the streets...Koreazy Korea

More strange things in the Land of the Not Quite Right

julian wrote:

Today i saw the strangest thing. There is a woman who sells milk/soymilk/coffe/ et al in the mornings on the street. She has a little cart thing, and a stool, and sits there. 

 

I'm walking up to her to buy a little carton of milk as I often do, when 6 guys in black jumpsuits jump out of a van, hold up and take pictures of a whiteboard with the date and some information I didn't understand on it (and her in the background), grab the pieces of her cart and all the stuff she was selling, and put it in the back of the van. I was so shocked, and a lot of the people around were just kind of watching with moderate surprise, but not like me. She was begging them not to take any more of her stuff, and I saw she did make off with one of her trays and some cash. They didn't pursue her anymore or try to take anything from her. I don't need to emphasize that the woman did not look rich.

 

I tried normalizing this; obviously she is illegally selling things on a street corner, and the men were government "agents" and if you let one person sell illegally then everyone will, i know, BUT i was so shocked by the blitzkrieg style of springing out of the van and ambushing her like she was selling poisoned milk.

 

Good god, what's the point of allocating 7 people and a van to do this? Is this creating government jobs? (These were grown men, not civil service droids, which made almost comical-- when I realized that they're stealing a cart from an ajumma, i wondered how they eat the dinner this job provides).

 

What's wrong with the old slob, golfcart & ticketbook technique for managing illegal vendors? 7 guys, a van, a camera, a whiteboard, the time they spend hunting...what a godawful waste of time to ruin someone's month! I'll have to tell my metermaid friend back in the states about this...

Has anyone seen this happen before? I know John saw the raid next to city hall some years back...

Marion Wrote-

Yes, Julian, it never ceases to shock me, no matter how many times I've witnessed it over the past decades.  It makes me really angry and seems to bother some other onlookers, but unless a substantial number of people start a movement to end such action, it will probably continue.  There is a(n unfair) law against street peddling.

 

Marion