South Korean Police Cars

dg0223

Member
Feb 20, 2011
703
USA/Texas
Yesterday I was watching CNN and I saw Kim Jong Un's motorcade being escorted down a deserted highway to the DMZ. His motorcade was being escorted by at least one South Korean police vehicle. I had never seen a lightbar like that before in my life. It prompted me to look up some other South Korean police vehicles. Man, they've got some interesting lightbars on those Hyundai police cars.

Gimhae_Seobu_Police_Station_Patrol_Car.JPG




I can only assume the lightbars, like their American counterparts, have selectable flash patterns, because the lightbar on the car escorting the motorcade looked like the one in the picture and in the first two videos, but had a "Knight Rider" type flash pattern to it rather than the flash patterns in the videos. It also had a second level of lighting like the lightbar in the third video.

I had seen some interesting looking Japanese lightbars, but I had never seen these Korean ones.
 

dg0223

Member
Feb 20, 2011
703
USA/Texas
Apparently it looks as if that lightbar extends to a high-rise lightbar with a message board as well.


 
Jun 18, 2013
3,709
PA
That KO Aerodynic has a message board as well. hmm.. might be time to get off my duff and find one! lol
 

dg0223

Member
Feb 20, 2011
703
USA/Texas
I'm sure I'm wrong, but this looks like an AeroDynic shell. I'm sure it's just a similar shape, but still pretty interesting.

 
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dg0223

Member
Feb 20, 2011
703
USA/Texas
And I guess the KO-Aero also had a strobe version and a non-message board version as well.

 

dg0223

Member
Feb 20, 2011
703
USA/Texas
And I guess the lower level "Knight Rider" flash pattern acts as a cruise light of sorts.

 

pdk9

Member
May 26, 2010
3,834
New York & Florida
I always thought that the lightbars in Asian EVs always look like tacky toys that look like are trying to make it onto spaceships.

Some of the ideas look cool in theory but look poorly-executed products
 

WhelenNDealin

Member
Aug 6, 2017
575
Ontario, Canada
Japanese police cars are also pretty interesting.


They're pretty interesting to see in person. I've been to Japan more than a few times with the missus to visit her family and friends there. The siren tone they use is the best simulated mechanical tone next to the EQ2B, IMHO. The models that they use are the Clarion Model AA-228F and AA-600A. Both models only have wail tones. One has a rise/fall of 4 seconds and the other 8 seconds. They also have a manual tone. The sirens have a wonderful wind down, IMO. The 600A has secondary tones that sound like they're taken from a Nintendo game. The lightbars themselves are raised so as to be visible over the many, many people and general congestion there and are always lit so as to show police presence. They went with the Vector-style bars due to the huge amount of people and congestion in the intersections and crosswalks. I've seen the vehicles in action a number of times and it's quite interesting. Here are some videos of the Japanese police vehicles with sirens on:


You can hear the wind-down and manual tone in this one:


Mix of vehicles. They appear to be using LED bars in this one. Recorded in my wife's home city:


Video of the Clarion AA-228F:



Now, their ambulances are very typically Japanese. Cutsey hi-low tones. One's used on major streets, another is used when in residential zones. It has a computerized female voice that indicates where the ambulance is approaching from and to "Please give way." They'll also use a wail from time to time. Their ambulances will occasionally blast a mechanical siren when clearing intersections. I'm not sure if it's a simulated mechanical or a real mechanical siren, but if it's simulated, it sounds pretty spectacular.
 
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WhelenNDealin

Member
Aug 6, 2017
575
Ontario, Canada
Also wanted to add a video of the Clarion AA-600A.

 
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Jun 18, 2013
3,709
PA
The V style Japanese bars have always caught my eye.. I had one of these from the early to mid 90's (best guess) and it disappeared along with several other interesting lights when the firehall where I was storing some items at decided to let some klepto into a locked area.

I'd like to find another.
 
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dg0223

Member
Feb 20, 2011
703
USA/Texas
I always thought that the lightbars in Asian EVs always look like tacky toys that look like are trying to make it onto spaceships.

Some of the ideas look cool in theory but look poorly-executed products

pdk, I agree with you about them being poorly executed. I think they're just neat to look at from the "and now for something completely different" perspective. Those Korean LED bars look like they have crap visibility during the day. For those designs, I think they'd be better off with halogen rotators rather than the LED panels.
 
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Jarred J.

Lifetime VIP Donor
May 21, 2010
11,580
Shelbyville, TN
The strobe bars is all they had when I was over there 14 years ago. It had 2 patterns I ever saw. There are 6 strobes on the bar. I saw them with the same pattern as the led bars "center out" or 2 inboard/ outboard vs the center ones on each side.
 

WhelenNDealin

Member
Aug 6, 2017
575
Ontario, Canada
The V style Japanese bars have always caught my eye.. I had one of these from the early to mid 90's (best guess) and it disappeared along with several other interesting lights when the firehall where I was storing some items at decided to let some klepto into a locked area.

I'd like to find another.

My guess is that it might be more than a bit tricky to find another. Hell, when the missus and I were there last summer, I looked for an old Clarion siren or any warning equipment at a large swap meet/flea market and came up completely empty-handed. As for the time period of the bar, a lot of the police forces in Japan, to my knowledge, used a bar that was a bit similar to an Aero in appearance up until the mid-late 90s. If it was from the early to mid 90s, my guess would be that it'd have been from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police versus any of the other city or prefecture police departments. It's also possible that any manufacture date information would have used the Japanese calendar, making it a tiny bit trickier to nail down the year of production. For example, if the year of manufacture was 1999, it would be indicated as Heisei 11, not 1999.

As a side-note, the sirens in that era also used a different style of wail that was a lot closer to what we'd associate with one. Their ambulances will use this wail tone from time to time. IIRC, it was a tone on one of their Patlite brand sirens.

That style of bar is somewhat ubiquitous in Japan outside of any medical vehicles. Medical vehicles use a very distinct lighting setup that's a bit tricky to describe. This includes ambulances and some blood transfer vehicles. TEPCO emergency vehicles will use the V-style bar, as will other random emergency response vehicles. It's a very, very different system, as one can imagine, when it comes to which vehicles use lights/sirens than over here and beyond that, which vehicles use what styles of lighting and audible equipment. It's all nicely organized in a very Japanese style.

I asked my wife about this and given her general disinterest in vehicle lighting, the best answer that I got was: "I remember the lights looking different when I was a kid." As we're both in our early 30s, this would mesh nicely with many Japanese police forces continuing to use a straight bar prior to the late 90s-early 2000s.
 
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Jun 18, 2013
3,709
PA
That bar looks absolutely horrendous on that RX-7... :oops:
 
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WhelenNDealin

Member
Aug 6, 2017
575
Ontario, Canada
Here's that "Aero" looking lightbar.
View attachment 212553


That's a newer and/or "sleeker" variant of the one that I remember seeing in a few photos. It's almost like the SUPER SLEEK MEGA TERRIFIC HAPPY HAPPY! version of that bar. The centre grating on the other bar was a lot more plain, IIRC.

What the heck is that little bit of Plexiglas on the hood for? Wonder if it lights up or if it's only something the Japanese know the true meaning of...

Great country, but inexplicably bizarre as hell in endless ways...
 
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Jun 18, 2013
3,709
PA
@ProPatriaNeverPassAFault It's probably an airbrake designed to slow the car down when in super pursuit mode.. aka Knight Rider... haha
 
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irsa76

Member
May 24, 2010
342
Australia, NSW
That's a newer and/or "sleeker" variant of the one that I remember seeing in a few photos. It's almost like the SUPER SLEEK MEGA TERRIFIC HAPPY HAPPY! version of that bar. The centre grating on the other bar was a lot more plain, IIRC.

What the heck is that little bit of Plexiglas on the hood for? Wonder if it lights up or if it's only something the Japanese know the true meaning of...

Great country, but inexplicably bizarre as hell in endless ways...
It was explained to me years ago that it is a deflector for rain, stones or anything thrown at them during high speed pursuits.
And here's an old school Mazda.
View attachment 212555
It's an R30 Nissan Skyline.
 

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