The Seoul city government announced in a statement on Monday that it plans to ban car-hailing app Uber Technologies, Inc. Following the decision, Uber said in a statement that the city “is in danger of remaining trapped in the past and getting left behind by the global ‘sharing economy’ movement.”
A local Seoul authority said that under South Korean law, Uber is illegal, keeping fee-paying private transport services unregistered with authorities. This follows similar claims made by other governments and authorities that Uber “skirts regulations,” and Uber currently faces many lawsuits in the U.S. and Europe. In response to Seoul’s move, however, an Uber spokesman denied the app’s illegality, saying that Uber is “a technology company that connects drivers with passengers” instead of directly running a taxi service with rented cars.
Seoul said that instead of using Uber, it would launch a new app in December to provide the same type of offerings as Uber, including geo-location data and driver ratings, but for official taxis only. Uber, recently valued at more than $18 billion, indicated that it was planning a response to Seoul’s move.
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