Ghana embassy pays up....

..as Most foreign embassies ignore parking tickets

Ghana paid all of its fines for the second consecutive year as the majority of foreign diplomatic missions in Seoul (South Korea) turned a blind eye on parking tickets in the first nine months of the year, with slightly over three percent paying fines for traffic violations, the Seoul City government said yesterday.

According to a municipal tally, 1,431 parking tickets were issued for vehicles belonging to the 86 foreign missions in the January-September period, with the fines totaling 56.4 million won (around $47,000).

However, only 43 parking tickets, or 3.07 percent of the total, were paid.

Cars registered with the Russian embassy received the most parking tickets with 117, followed by Vietnam (93), Algeria (78), Mongolia (72), Libya (70), France (68), Morocco (59) and the Ivory Coast (59).

A total of 73 foreign missions, including the Russian, Vietnamese and the French, failed to pay any fines at all. The Japanese, Mongolian, Romanian and Mexican embassies paid up only once.

For the Russian and French embassies, this is the second year in a row that they completely ignored the penalties. Last year France topped the list with 372 parking tickets, followed by Russia with 371.

The United States embassy paid half of the 30 tickets it received, while the Vatican City and Ghana paid all of its fines for the second consecutive year.

Despite such low collection rates, the local government virtually has no choice but to wait for the foreign missions' to pay the fines voluntarily. Under the agreement of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations in 1961, foreign missions are obliged to heed the laws of their host countries, but cannot be forced to do so.

"We released these figures to encourage foreign embassies to stick to our local traffic laws and pay fines for their violations," said a city official.