South Korea has an extremely high percentage of smokers (I have vague recollection of a statistic I read somewhere claiming that over 50% of Korean males smoke…though I can’t find exact figures right now※) and over the past two weeks I’ve taken note of some of the more bizarre situations that Koreans seem to think call for a smoke. Here they are presented in easy to use list form.
* Caught under an awning without an umbrella in a downpour.
* Tunning a guitar in million degree heat while wearing a leather jacket.
* Disembarking from a bus.
* Waiting for a crosswalk light to change.
* Picking through my garbage.
* Doing battle with someone in a computer game at a PC 방.
* Drinking beer during a lunch break at a construction sight.
* Delivering Chinese food.
* Making a phone call outside my apartment.
* Heading off to church on a Sunday morning, with a leather bound bible under one arm.
* Preparing to beat your high school daughter for allegedly having sex with a teacher (seen in a movie).
* Guarding a parking lot of tour buses while Chinese people attend an 인삼 (人蔘 / ginseng) shop.
* Questioning witnesses to a drunken bar fight.
So there are some of the situations in which smoking would be socially acceptable here in the land of the morning calm. If you have any others (sex and drinking don’t count because they aren’t that funny) take it to the comments. Additionally if anyone knows how I can change my template to make the colums bigger (no one uses 640x480 resolution anymore…I don’t know why the default layouts always assume they do) drop me an email. I’m sick of wasting all the space here, but I’m a moron about junks like HTML and the like.
※ If you have links to some reliable data as to the percentage of the Korean population that smokes, hook me up in the comments or send me an email. I’ll edit this nonsense if give you mad prop shout outs dawg.
