The four rooms where Seoul's subway keeps what you left behind

You notice two stops later: the tote bag is still on the seat and the train is gone. In Seoul this is less a loss than a procedure, and the procedure has addresses, opening hours, and a clock that runs for about a week.

The first hour

Items left on a train usually ride to the end of the line, where cleaning crews collect them and hand them to the station office, the yeongmusil (역무실). Note your car number and the door number printed inside the frame; that is the first thing anyone will ask. If you realise quickly, head for the terminus rather than the station where you got off.

Four rooms, one per pair of lines

Seoul Metro holds unclaimed items in lost-property centres, yusilmul center (유실물센터), sorted by line: City Hall for Lines 1 and 2, Chungmuro for 3 and 4, Wangsimni for 5 and 6, Taereung for 7 and 8. They keep weekday office hours and close at weekends, which is the detail that strands people on a Saturday.

After the seventh day

Unclaimed things pass to the police and surface on Lost112, the national lost-property database, photographed and dated. Search it in Korean — jigap (지갑), wallet; gabang (가방), bag — because English entries are rare. Passports move fastest of all, straight to the police, and your embassy will want the report number.

Nothing here disappears quickly. It gets filed.

Taxis are a different system

For a taxi, call 120, Seoul's city information line, with your receipt or the trip record in your hailing app; they trace the car by its plate. Cafés keep things behind the counter for weeks without logging them anywhere, so the fastest route is walking back in and describing the object.

지하철에 무언가를 두고 내렸다면, 탔던 칸 번호부터 기억해 두는 편이 좋다.