I See Dead People
If you’ve ridden the Seoul subway lately you may have seen ads from their new campaign to get people to not walk up the escalator. The ads tout the ‘Standing in two lines and riding era’ (두줄서서타기시대) which I, being the cynical guy I am, can only assume is being pushed to decrease maintenance fees on escalators and extend their useful lives. I can see accountants wringing their hands and grinning evilly as they extend said useful lives.
Anyway, there are two main posters being used to push this change. One features a pretty young woman holding a cute little boy’s hand. The other one features a haunted menagerie of ghouls. Seeing this poster once, you might notice that the man in it looks a little worse for wear, and you can imagine that he likely reeks of soju and cigarettes. Forced to see this poster again and again as you ride the escalator at Sindorim station when transferring, the repetition renders the faces ever more disturbing until you’re compelled as if by a ghostly presence to blog it out of your system once and for all.
Here’s that disturbing image. Let them stare deep into your soul and tell me you don’t feel changed.
The Joshing Gnome 
LOL That is hilarious. The only thing that ruins the eeriness of this poster is the guy is a well known drama actor who every Korean would immediately recognize, and he’s usually in some CEO type role. Anonymous adjeoshi would have made it absolutely perfect.
I always feel like screaming when I see those ads! Like, the escalators are clogged enough already! Why can’t we stand on one side, and walk on the other? We can all afford to pay 100 won more per ride to go towards maintenance fees.
Though the escalators that make me craziest are in grocery stores. (Wide enough to fit a cart and a person beside it, standing there blocking the way for anyone who might want to get to the next floor in less than 5 minutes.)
But, to go on-topic, yeah, the ad is creepy, and I kept wondering: who is this guy, with this little kid? Has nobody taught herself to run away from strange, nasty old men who grab her hand on the subway escalators?
Why are the pictures titled “Racism on the Seoul Subway 007”?
Rich,
Because that picture was imported to my computer along with the picture I mentioned in this post
https://joshinggnome.wordpress.com/2008/05/24/answer-in-the-form-of-a-question/