Lime suspended South Korea, its only Asian market, over 'chaotic' scooters

Lime is a shared micromobility operator renting electric scooters and bikes in cities worldwide.

Lime launched in South Korea in October 2019 and at one point operated roughly 22,000 vehicles — its only market in Asia. But Seoul had more than 20 e-scooter rental startups running over 50,000 e-scooters, including Swing, Beam, Xing Xing and Kickgoing, with no request-for-proposal process to limit fleet sizes.

South Korea's revised Road Traffic Act, in effect from 13 May 2021, required riders to be 16 or over, licensed and helmeted, and to use bike paths and designated parking — causing a ridership drop, per Lime, and 40,000 KRW (~$30.89) towing fees for illegal parking. Wind Mobility and Neuron had already pulled out. Lime said geofencing was only in place in certain designated areas.

Lime temporarily shut operations in several South Korean cities from the end of June 2022 and did not say when it would return; it said it would keep working with the government toward an RFP-based framework.

Names the structural cause — no RFP permits — not just 'the market was hard'.

A rare exit framed as regulatory advocacy: leave, and lobby for the permit system that would have kept you.

The numbers make the chaos concrete: 20+ operators, 50,000+ scooters, about $31 a tow.

Operator chaos is a regulation problem: markets without permits select for fleet floods, and even the biggest operator exits rather than absorb the externality.

The suspension took effect at the end of June 2022. Lime said it would continue working with the Korean government and other operators toward an RFP framework and hoped to return with its newest hardware; the source reports no return date.