If Something Goes Wrong
Losing Something
A phone, a wallet, a passport — where each one goes when you leave it behind, and which one has a deadline.
The short answer
Things you leave behind here usually come back. Go to the lost property office of whoever you left it with — the subway line, the bus company, the taxi service — rather than assuming it's gone. A passport is the exception: that one starts with the police and ends at your embassy, and it is worth beginning today rather than tomorrow.
Where it went
| Left it in | Where to look |
|---|---|
| The subway | Each line runs a lost property office, and items are gathered at a small number of stations. Staff at any station can tell you which one and whether it has been handed in. |
| A taxi | The hard one, because the car has gone. If you paid by card or used an app, the ride can be traced — which is the strongest argument on this page for not paying cash. |
| A bus | The operating company, not the city. The number on the side of the bus is what identifies it. |
| A café, shop or restaurant | Go back. Staff generally keep what is left behind, and a phone left on a table is far more likely to be sitting behind the counter than gone. |
| A train or the airport | The operator and the airport each run their own office, and both take items handed in by passengers. |
There is a national lost-and-found service that many of these offices report into, so a single search can cover several of them at once. Ask at any police station or call 1330 and they will point you at it — the site is easier to use with someone reading Korean.
Report it, even if you expect it back
For anything you will claim on insurance, you need a police report, and you need it while you are still in the country. Walk into any police station (경찰서) with your passport. Say what was lost, where and when. Ask for the document — an insurer will not settle on your account of it.
Cards and phones, in that order
- Cancel the cards first, from wherever you are standing. This is the only part that gets worse by the minute.
- Find the phone — the tracking feature you set up at home works here, and it is what tells you whether it is in a lost property office or in a taxi still moving.
- Then go and collect it. Nothing else on the list is time-sensitive in the same way.
A lost passport
This is the one with a deadline, because it decides whether you fly home on schedule.
- Report it to the police and get the report. Everything after this asks for it.
- Contact your embassy — most issue an emergency travel document that gets you home, and some can only do it on certain days, which is why the day you notice matters.
- Bring what proves who you are: a photocopy or photo of the passport, another photo ID, passport photographs if you have them.
- Tell your airline. A changed document can mean a changed booking.
Photograph your passport now and keep the image somewhere that isn't your phone — an email to yourself will do. The version of you who needs it will not be able to reach the phone.
What it's actually like here
Leaving a bag on a café table while you order is ordinary, and people do it with laptops. That is not an instruction to be careless — it is context, so you know that when something goes missing the likeliest explanation is that a stranger handed it in, not that it was taken. Start by asking, not by giving up.