Lately, one thing about life in Korea has surprised me: walking on a sidewalk no longer feels as straightforward as it once did.

I notice it most in the crowded parts of Seoul. Around Gwanghwamun, office workers hurry between buildings while tourists stop mid-stride to take a photo. Gangnam-daero is busy in a different way — workers, shoppers, students and tourists all moving through some of the widest pavement in the city. Even there, I find myself glancing left, then right, then over my shoulder, out of habit now more than choice.

A bicycle appears from the side without warning. An electric scooter cuts toward the crowd and slips through whatever gap opens up. A delivery motorcycle rolls onto the pavement and, more often than not, stops exactly where people are trying to walk. The rider can see me. I usually can’t see the rider until it’s too late to do much about it. That gap in awareness is what makes these moments unsettling — there may be just enough room to avoid a collision, but “enough room” and “felt safe” are not the same thing.

It isn’t only the busy avenues. Delivery bikes climb onto the sidewalk in quiet residential alleys too, and lately there are more runners out early in the morning and again in the evening. Running is a good habit, and I don’t begrudge anyone for it. But on a narrow, crowded pavement, someone moving fast from behind can still give a person a fright. The sidewalk now has to carry everyone — walkers, runners, riders — at whatever speed each of them happens to be going.

For someone healthy and quick on their feet, this is mostly an annoyance. For a child who changes direction without warning, an older person who won’t hear a bicycle coming up behind them or a parent pushing a stroller with nowhere to go when a scooter is blocking the path, it is something closer to a real hazard. We have a term for these people — vulnerable pedestrians — but a sidewalk is supposed to be the one place where that vulnerability doesn’t matter.

None of this is an argument against bicycles. Cycling is good for you, good for the air, and for a short trip, it makes more sense than a car. Seoul’s public bike system is genuinely useful, scooters can close the last stretch between a subway exit and wherever you’re headed, and delivery riders are doing work half the city depends on. The benefits aren’t in question. What’s harder to explain is why the risk of all this convenience keeps landing on the person just trying to walk somewhere.

Part of the reason is that Seoul’s streets haven’t kept pace with how people get around now. Bike lanes start, then vanish a block later. Out on the road, a cyclist or scooter rider has buses and trucks bearing down on them, so it’s not exactly a mystery why the sidewalk starts to look safer. But moving onto the sidewalk doesn’t make the danger disappear — it just hands it to someone else.

By law, motorcycles and electric scooters generally aren’t allowed on sidewalks, and bicycles are supposed to stick to bike lanes or the road except in specific cases. Even where cycling on a sidewalk is technically allowed, pedestrians still have the right of way. On paper, it’s clear enough. On the actual street, it plays out differently. Police figures show personal mobility devices — electric scooters chief among them — were involved in 2,232 traffic accidents nationwide in 2024, with 23 deaths. The numbers don’t say how many happened on sidewalks specifically, but they’re a reminder that these aren’t harmless toys.

Parking is its own headache. A scooter left across a tactile paving strip might be a minor detour for most of us, but for someone with a visual impairment, it’s a real obstacle. A motorcycle wedged across a narrow stretch of pavement can push a wheelchair user or a parent with a stroller straight into traffic.

Rental operators could do more here — requiring scooters to be parked properly before a ride can even end, and pulling badly parked ones off the street quickly instead of leaving them for pedestrians to work around. Delivery platforms might also ask whether the pressure to arrive faster is what’s nudging riders onto sidewalks in the first place. Enforcement helps too, especially near schools, subway stations and busy shopping streets — but it won’t fix streets that were never designed for this much mixed traffic. What Seoul needs, eventually, is bike and mobility lanes that actually go somewhere instead of quietly ending mid-block.

The city doesn’t have to choose between embracing new ways of getting around and keeping its sidewalks safe. But it does have to decide, in the narrow strip of space where they overlap, whose turn it is to yield.

On a sidewalk, that answer should be simple. A child should be able to walk home without dodging wheels. An older person shouldn’t have to keep checking over their shoulder. And even Seoul’s widest, busiest sidewalk isn’t really working as a sidewalk if no one walking on it can relax.

*Shin Go-eun is an associate professor at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City. *