Opinion

Some Idiot Stole My Bike – Is the theft of my bike a sign of societal decline? Almost certainly, yes. 

Gwangju News

By William Urbanski 

When I was an exchange student in Italy more than two decades ago, a student stole something from the changeroom while everybody was in PE class. The theft was reported and news of the thievery spread quickly around the school, but to the best of my knowledge, the culprit was never caught. Later that afternoon, the French teacher (who was about as grizzled an individual as I have ever met) summarily took the opportunity to berate the entire class (in French) about why stealing is bad, uninterrupted for the full fifty-minute class. 

I have to say, he made some pretty good points. While many details of his ferocious and completely warranted tirade have been lost to the ether of time, the point that sticks in my mind to this day is this: “When you steal an object, what you really steal is social trust, which is much, much worse.” 

Recently, when my rickety, old bike that had been sitting unlocked in the bicycle bay of my apartment building for nearly two years was pilfered, I realized that something intangible had also been lost. It is hard to define exactly what that is, but let us call it “my belief that nobody in Gwangju would ever steal my bike.” 

Crime in Canada 

Canada is idealized in many ways – so much so that over one million people immigrated there in 2022 alone. But alas, it is not all sunshine and roses in the Great White North. An uncomfortable fact of life is that theft in general is rampant. In Canada, if you do not lock your bike, it is gone. If you do not lock the door to your house, someone will come in and steal your stuff. If you leave your car window open while you run into the store, you can count on your valuables disappearing. You get the picture. 

Contrast this to Gwangju, where I regularly leave my backpack unattended at the ACC (and nationwide for that matter) and never, not even once, has anyone so much as laid a hand on it. I think living in a place where stealing is not the default option has actually made me a better person in some ways. On no fewer that three occasions, I have come across debit and credit cards that have been misplaced or forgotten, and whereas curiosity may have gotten the better of my younger self, now, I do not even touch them.   

I think by and large, this attitude of “I should not take things that are not mine” has largely been lost in Canada and been replaced with the age-old axiom “finders keepers, losers weepers.” Is this that dark road that Gwangju wishes to follow?   

Alternatives to Stealing My Bike 

To the dirty rat who stole my bike, I think it is time for a little public service announcement: It turns out the city of Gwangju offers a couple of viable alternatives to stealing my bike. In no particular order some of these are: 

  • Not stealing my bike. 
  • Asking if you can use my bike for a while, then bringing it back when you are done. 
  • Asking someone else (maybe in a KakaoTalk chat group) if anyone has a bike you can use for a while. 
  • Buying a cheap bike from Tangun Market. 
  • Renting an electric scooter for like a dollar, then leaving it either in the middle of a sidewalk or a crosswalk when you are done with it. 

And just in case the dirty bike thief thought that my bike was fair game because nobody was using it, there is actually a kind of litmus test to determine if it is OK to take a bike. It goes a little something like this: Did you pay for the bike? Did someone give you the bike? Is there a sign on the bike that says “free”? If none of these conditions are met, the bike is not yours and you should not take it. 

My Old Bike Sucked Anyway and Now I Have a New Bike 

My old bike had tiny tires, the brakes barely worked, the seat was too low, it looked stupid, and I hated riding it. If someone really needed that bike so bad they needed to steal it, then I feel sorry for that person. All that being said, it served an important purpose and made my life better and easier on many occasions.  

My bike getting stolen was actually the push I needed to follow through on a long-overdue upgrade. So, the day after I realized some dirty rat punked my bike, I bought a new one from Tangun Market. While by no means Tour de France quality, it is much better than my old one. 

While bikes come and go, the social trust that is degraded with theft of any kind is something that should concern all of us, lest we want to live in a society where we expect our things to be stolen, and not the opposite. 

In the end though, a bike is a just a bike, and even if the thief were caught, he would probably just get a slap on the wrist. However, all crime is a slippery slope, and if this successful heist emboldens the individual to attempt more daring escapades, such as stealing iPhones for example, the thief would almost certainly… face time. ( •_•)>⌐■-■ / (⌐■_■) 

The Author 

William Urbanski is the managing editor of the Gwangju News. He hates it when people steal his bicycle.