大量中国人去韩国考驾照 外媒看“新韩流”

Chinese shoppers already have a seemingly insatiable appetite for South Korean pop music, TV dramas, cosmetics and fashion. Now we're after another must-have item: a driver's license.

韩国的流行音乐、电视剧、化妆品似乎已经不太能满足中国消费者的需求了。现在，我们又在追求另一件必需品：驾照。

In China, would-be drivers can wait up to a year for a license and pay double the $420 that one costs in South Korea. That has fuelled a boom in Chinese visitors taking South Korean driving tests and converting the licenses when they get home.

在中国学车，可能要等上一年才能拿到驾照，而且花费是在韩国所需的每人420美元的两倍。这已经引发了中国游客参加韩国驾照考试的热潮，他们回国后就把在韩国考的驾照转为中国驾照。

At a driving school in the suburbs of Seoul, a buzzing operation which sees some 200 Chinese applicants a month, half of the class listens to a Korean-speaking teacher while the Chinese visitors fix their eyes on a TV screen showing sample questions for written tests in Mandarin.

在首尔郊区的一所驾校里，每个月大概有200名中国人申请考驾照。班级里有一半的人听老师用韩语授课，中国游客则目不转睛地盯着电视屏幕上的笔试例题，当然这些问题都是中文的。

South Korea has eased rules for licenses, cutting the hours of training to 13, including six hours of driving time. That has led nearly 70,000 Chinese nationals to become holders of South Korean driving licenses in the past three years.

韩国降低了对驾照考试的要求，把培训时间缩减到13个小时，其中包括6小时的驾车时间。所以在过去的3年里，将近7万名中国公民拿到了韩国驾照。

It takes only a week to get a license at state-appointed driving schools in Korea. Applicants can even do their driving tests on rooftop tracks, meaning they have little experience in dealing with actual traffic.

在韩国国立的驾校里只需一周的时间就可以拿到驾照，申请者甚至可以在架空道路上进行驾照考试，但这也意味着他们可能没有任何实际的道路交通经验。