U.S. truck in Korea

The majority of Korean streets, whether in Seoul or elsewhere, are fairly narrow. Consider this one, for example. Songpa-gu (송파구) is a prestigious, well-developed area, but the street shown above has almost no real parking spaces along the side of the street.

"빌라" style, low-rise apartment residents can typically park on the ground floor of their buildings, but beyond that, it's mostly ad-hoc, informal stuff. So the smaller your car is, the easier it is to find parking.

So you can imagine my surprise when I saw a Ford F-150 parked along the street earlier today. My first thought was That guy's got to be a foreigner, but it turned out to be a Korean (looking) guy. It really made me wonder.

Although it's not surprising for Korean to buy foreign vehicles (it's a status thing), they'll typically get a car -- no matter where you live you still have to find parking.

So my guess is that this fella either 1.) is maybe Asian-American (quite possibly military), and the U.S. government paid to ship the thing here, or 2.) the owner has made a very unique purchasing decision.

Either way, the sight of a Texas-sized Ford truck in the middle of Seoul was a rare one indeed.