Ghana Embassy Pays Off Traffic Tickets

Soul, South Korea -- Only about 4.5 percent of the traffic violation and parking tickets given to foreign embassy cars last year were paid. The Seoul Metropolitan Government said Tuesday that 1,265 traffic violation tickets worth W50.72 million ($40,000) were issued last year but that only 57, worth W2.28 million ($1,800), were paid.

The embassies with the most tickets were the Libyan with 97, Vietnamese with 77 and French with 67. Seventy-one embassies paid none of their tickets, including the Chinese, Japanese, German, Dutch, Russian, Belgian, Spanish and Israeli. The French paid for 20 percent of their tickets.

The only embassies that paid off all their tickets were Ghana and Switzerland, with two each, and the Vatican and Chile, with one each. Britain paid 86 percent of the amount of its tickets, the United States 76 percent and Australia 71 percent. The embassies with clean records, or whose cars had no tickets, were Congo, Norway, Sweden and Costa Rica.