I saw Old Boy again last weekend. Thoroughly recommend it if you like strange nasty surreal movies, but the beginning made me wonder…
It starts with our protaganist Oh Daesu in a police station. He is drunk and making a nuisance of himself, and he is a prisoner. But he’s not in a cell. Instead he’s in some kind of waiting room, and there he stays until a friend shows up to take him home. Despite being noisy, abusive, and having to be physically restrained to prevent him urinating in a bin, he isn’t put in a cell. Is this kind of leniency standard practise in South Korea?
I can’t speak for Korea, but Japanese police (and society in general) tend to be very forgiving of drunks, particularly if they’re office workers staggering around late at night. The scene in Oldboy would probably have played out similarly in Tokyo (though the cops may have just checked his wallet for an address and shoved him in a cab to send him home).
Another thing is that Japan (and I believe Korea) uses police boxes (koban). There are large central police stations with jail cells in each wide area, but then there are also small one- or two-room offices scattered every couple of blocks or so with a couple of officers stationed in each one. Their main job is giving directions to lost people, but they occasionally take turns walking a beat around the block or going out to investigate disturbances. These boxes don’t have cells in them; if the cops there pick up someone causing trouble, they either call the main station to have him picked up if the situation warrants it, or convince him to go home quietly if he’s not a danger, maybe letting him sleep it off until someone comes to get him. In either case, there’s nowhere to keep him except the main room in the koban, where anyone else who comes in will also be standing. The opening in Oldboy looks like it takes place in one of these.