Illegally parked cars and other vehicles hindering the flow of traffic are not an uncommon sight in Seoul. Since around 2019, even pedestrian walkways are no longer immune from obstruction, having been invaded by a new type of vehicle: e-scooters.

While e-scooter riders are often the first to blame, challenges also exist as users find it increasingly difficult to locate approved drop-off zones, which are only shown virtually on the mobile app's map, without any physical markers posted in the correct areas.

Users say this turns parking e-scooters into an expensive guessing game, as returning the scooters to approved locations according to the mobile app does not always align with non-towing zones designated by the city's guidelines.

Under Seoul City's guidelines, tow zones encompass nine specific zones. These include spaces bridging sidewalks and roadways, bicycle lanes, central pedestrian walkways, tactile paving blocks and elevator entrances.

The remaining four are areas within a 3-meter radius of pedestrian crosswalks and traffic islands; within a 5-meter radius around bus stops, taxi pickup points and subway exits; and in designated lanes for buses and taxis.

Failing to meet even one of these criteria can result in the e-scooter getting towed, accompanied by a towing fee of 40,000 won ($31) -- 20 times the 2,000 won charged for a 10-minute scooter ride.

“I discovered I had parked the scooter in an ambiguous spot that could be interpreted as both inside and outside the tow zone,” said a Yongsan-gu resident whose Swing e-scooter was towed a few days after he parked it. Swing is the second-largest personal mobility vehicle (PM) operator in Korea.

Swing's customer service repeatedly responded that the app's "restricted areas" differ slightly from the city-determined tow zones, adding more confusion to the designation of "correct" e-scooter parking spots.

Kim Young-hoon, communications manager at Swing, blames the city's "rigorous" tow zone demarcations, claiming that it makes it almost impossible for e-scooter apps to verify return locations accurately with GPS, considering the potential margin of error as within a 3- to 5-meter radius.

"I didn't realize that having GPS approval is not a guarantee that I won't be towed," one user complained in a review of the Swing app on the Apple App Store. Another said, "How do I know if I'm 5 meters or 6 meters away from a subway exit?"

Between July 2021 and January 2023, around 88,000 e-scooters were towed, and 2.4 billion won ($1.8 million) in towing fees were charged both to customers and operators, according to data from the Seoul Metropolitan Government.

Seoul's towing process relies on people reporting misplaced e-scooters via an online platform (www.seoul-pm.com), with private tow truck operators subsequently relocating them to district-run depots. E-scooter companies must cover both the towing and hourly storage fees (1,400 won) to reclaim their vehicles from these depots.

“The storage fee is fine, but the towing fee is not. We shelled out 100 million won ($76,700) in towing fees in June alone,” said Kim.

Swing claims to charge users for the towing fee in only 10 to 20 percent of cases after reviewing the return photos, covering the rest of the fees themselves. “The biggest winner in this game seems to be the towing companies," added Kim.

These operators, contracted by individual districts in Seoul, have a long history of dealing with illegally parked cars.

Given Seoul's citizen reporting system, some companies have been implicated in "self-reporting to artificially increase towing fees," according to Kim, as the tow truck drivers themselves report vehicles on the platform. He mentioned that Swing's towing cases plummeted by 85 percent in June after a towing company in Gangdong-gu was caught for self-reporting and the excessive collection of fees.

In March, Rep. Kim Kyo-heung from the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea criticized Seoul City's handling of private towing firms. His analysis, based on July 2021-2022 city data, estimated that two-thirds of e-scooter tows resulted from towing companies' self-reporting, suggesting a conflict of interest.

However, a tow truck driver from Hyeongje Transport affiliated with Yongsan-gu defended tow truck drivers, saying they don't tow any and every reported e-scooter.

"We recognize that others may have towed more e-scooters than necessary last year. ... Seoul city has begun terminating the operations of those who committed wrongdoing since last year and we can't risk breaching the stricter rules," he said, adding that tow truck companies are required to provide photographic evidence of each exact parking location to the district office.

The complexities of e-scooter parking have increased with their popularity for short-distance travel. A city survey last year revealed 43.3 percent of 2,859 respondents used e-scooters, and 19.1 percent did so weekly. As of January this year, Seoul had over 37,000 e-scooters from 12 companies, almost equal to the number of the city's public bicycles, called Ttareungi, which stands at 43,500.

Increased e-scooter usage since 2019 has led to a surge in traffic accidents, resulting in the 2021 revision of the Road Traffic Act, which mandates safety obligations and fines for illegal parking. Despite this revision, friction has persisted among users, the authorities and e-scooter companies.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government, for its part, claims it has done all it can and that it is the responsibility of e-scooter users to check tow zones carefully.

Kim Seung-ri, an official in Seoul City's Pedestrian and Bicycle Department, confirmed that each district has teams who review photo evidence from towing companies. In September 2022, districts also began terminating the operations of any towing company found to have self-reported or engaged in excessive towing.

She also noted that Seoul's development of approximately 200 parking stations for e-scooters and PMs has been funded by taxpayers, not e-scooter firms.

Kim Seung-ri did not clarify why the entire 40,000-won towing fee goes to the towing companies rather than at least a part of it being allocated to public initiatives such as the development of parking stations. She only said that these companies are contracted by individual districts, and that towing fees are not legally regarded as fines.

"This has been a standard practice ever since towing services started dealing with illegally parked cars," she said.