Seoul Metro will introduce a door-to-door lost-and-found delivery service in July, with launch as early as July 20, giving customers the option to receive recovered items at any address — food and cash excluded
Starting in July, passengers who have lost items on the Seoul subway will be able to have them delivered directly to their homes.
A university student from Daejeon once left a bag containing textbooks on a Seoul subway train. Although notified that the bag was being held at a lost-and-found center, making another trip to Seoul to retrieve it was far from easy. A working professional faced a similar predicament — because the lost-and-found center operates only on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., taking a day off work was necessary just to pick up a wallet.
Those kinds of inconveniences — taking time out of a busy schedule or traveling long distances to retrieve a lost item — are set to become a thing of the past. Seoul Metro announced it will launch a door-to-door lost-and-found delivery service in July, shipping recovered items directly to any address a customer specifies.
The service lets customers receive their belongings at home, at work, or any other location of their choosing without visiting a lost-and-found center in person. To use it, customers contact the center to confirm their item is being held and complete an identity verification process, then enter a delivery address and pay the shipping fee through a dedicated online portal. The item is then sent by courier. Food and cash are excluded from the service, and cash and valuables are handled through separate procedures under applicable regulations.
Seoul Metro has operated the "Ddota Lost-and-Found Delivery Service" since June last year, allowing customers to pick up recovered items from a locker at a subway station of their choice. With the addition of the new door-to-door option, the operator has expanded its contactless retrieval system so passengers can choose whichever method suits their situation.
Through the "Ddota Lost-and-Found Delivery Service," customers select a pickup station and pay via the Ddota Locker app, then collect their item at that station at a time convenient for them — such as on the commute home from work.
Together, the two services give passengers the flexibility to pick up a lost item from a nearby station locker or have it delivered to their home or workplace, whichever is more convenient.
More than 160,000 lost items were reported on the Seoul subway last year alone, and the new service is expected to significantly ease the burden passengers face when trying to retrieve them.
When an item goes missing, passengers should report it as soon as possible — noting the time and location of the loss as precisely as they can — to the customer safety office or customer service center at the nearest station. Seoul Metro also directs passengers to the Police Civil Service 24 website to help speed up the return process.
Through the Police Civil Service 24 portal, passengers can search by date, item type and location of loss; photos of recovered items are sometimes posted as well. If a search turns up a match, the owner should bring a valid ID to the station or lost-and-found center where the item is being held.
"Following the 'Ddota Lost-and-Found Delivery Service,' which lets passengers pick up items from a locker at the station of their choice, we have now expanded further with a door-to-door delivery option to make the experience even more convenient," Seoul Metro President Kim Tae-gyun said. "We will continue to develop practical, everyday services that passengers can feel in their daily lives, and work toward creating a more comfortable subway experience."
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