The hardest place to catch a cab in Seoul is near City Hall downtown, where it takes an average of 9.4 minutes. Chances of catching a taxi are not much higher near Gyeongbok Palace and Jongno, where it takes an average 8.9 minutes.

And 9 p.m. till midnight is the toughest time to catch a taxi, requiring 9.3 minutes on average.

But it takes only 7.2 minutes to catch a taxi between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. At night, it takes an average of 11.7 minutes near City Hall and 11.2 minutes around Gyeongbok Palace.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government last week released a report based on a study by the Seoul Institute and estimated that Seoulites spend a collective 197,266 minutes a day waiting for cabs.

The institute gathered data from 3,767 people living in the capital.

The average time it took to catch a cab was 7.9 minutes and the total waiting time was derived by multiplying that figure by 1.5 million, which is the number of times Seoulites use cabs a day.

That led to an estimate that W2.47 billion (US$1=W1,091) is wasted everyday in social costs as people wait for cabs, totaling W901.6 billion a year.