Ah ... Taxi Drivers II

Well, I hope you enjoyed Flint's little tale, and are in the mood for another one.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Then we'll begin.
I've been teaching in a few different places around Korea besides the 'ju.
About five years ago, I was teaching in Pohang, a small industrial city on the east coast. Not a bad town if you're a foreigner. There's quite a friendly group of expats there, and some good drinking establishments like "Giant Step" and the "Wa Bar."
One day, I was in a bus going downtown, and traffic seemed to be a little slow. We came up to the problem: a bus stopped in the curb lane with a car bumped up along the left side. Traffic was down to one narrow lane. As we passed the bus, we could see the driver and the car's driver locked in an embrace, dancing around in front of the bus.
But they weren't happy, oh no. You could tell from the looks on their faces. My bus proceeded on, so I could not see the end of what looked like a pretty feeble excuse for a fight.
A few months later, I was treated to a view of just how such a fight may have started.
I was leaving work, on my way to teach a private lesson. I was pretty lucky in Pohang, as another teacher at the end of his contract handed over all his privates to me. It was two and sometimes three extra hours of work a day, but the money was so good.
So good.
Anyway, I flagged down a cab, and we went down the street to the main intersection. The light was against us, and we had to wait for the crosswalk to clear before we could make the right turn.
Suddenly there was a commotion behind us. Another cabbie, impatient to make the turn after us, was honking his horn for us to go, Go, GO!
The crosswalk still wasn't clear, so we were stuck. The cabbie behind us wasn't having it, and started to edge around us on our left side. My cabbie didn't like that, and moved to cut him off, causing more honking.
The other driver tried to edge around us again, only to be stymied once more.
More honking, followed by yet another attempt to edge around us, and yet another frustration of his designs.
By this time, the crosswalk was clear, and we were free to go on our way. But that was not to be. Finally able to get around us, the cabbie cut us off, leaped out of his cab, came to the passenger window, and proceeded to curse out my driver.
I didn't understand too much Korean curse words at the time, but I did understand shepal. There was this um, entrepreneur... who sold jade, phone cards, and ... er, exotic underwear in a shop in downtown Pohang. He gave me a little phrasebook called "Making Out In Korea," which was mainly designed to help lovelorn G.I.'s connect with willing young female company. There were phrases like "You're pretty," "Do you want to dance?" and "Take off your (fill in the blank)." There was also a chapter on fighting words, such as "shepal," which I was hearing a lot of from the other driver.
My driver was kind of cool, which seemed to drive the guy even further and further into his vituperative vocabulary, and further into physical histrionics.
He was not going to allow us to leave at all.
I was sitting in the back seat, watching this display (and enjoying it), but was mindful that I did have a private lesson to get to.
Finally, my driver had had enough, and got out of the cab and started to exchange verbal sallies with the other guy. They were getting dangerously close to each other, but actual physical contact seemed to be taking an inordinately long time to develop.
I had to go, and flagged down another passing cab. The last I saw of the two drivers, they were bumping chests, threatening to throw a punch almost any second, and generally mooking around and around.
I've actually seen one fight were punches and kicks were thrown. It looked almost like a real fight, but I think the loser was just dogging it until the police came and he could extort his blood money from the other guy.
There haven't been too many occasions when I've felt in danger from any Korean. I've been threatened more by other foreigners who've had more than was good for them.
Koreans are pretty entertaining when they are working themselves up to a fight, but it seems more like a pale imitation of what we're used to back in the "real world."