As a motorcyclist I tend to see motorcycles wherever I go. When some people go on holiday they see people, or restaurants, or pre-Worboys traffic signs, but I see motorcycles. It's a
lot like having a gaydar, but with motorcycles.
See, some men can look at
another man and tell instinctively whether that man has a thing for other men. There are subtle clues. Does that man often dress up in a leather outfit? Does he possess a variety of chains and padlocks? Does he own a motorcycle? Whereas I can
look at a two-wheeled vehicle and tell whether it's a motorcyle or not. As far as most people are concerned the
Honda Super Cub pictured above is a moped, but that's wrong. It's actually a motorcycle. Specifically an underbone motorcycle.
Why is it a motorcycle? Well, mopeds have pedals, and the Super Cub doesn't, so it's not a moped. It's not a scooter, either, because
it has a chain, and a gearbox, and footpegs. The gearbox has an automatic clutch, but it's still a gearbox. And the Super Cub is powered by an internal combustion motor, so it's not a bicycle or an e-bike. Ergo it's a motorcycle.
The Super Cub has a long and
rich history. It was invented in the mid-50s as mass transport for Japan's
post-war population. It was designed so that delivery drivers
could park in first gear with the engine running, rush off and grab a bag of post-war reconstruction, and get back on the bike without having to fiddle around with a
clutch. Today the Super Cub is obsolescent - scooters have underseat storage and a gear-free CVT transmission - but Honda still
sells a 125cc version of the Super Cub, because it looks awesome.
Earlier in the year I visited Seoul. My mental stereotype of East Asia and South-East Asia is of masses of scooters waiting
for the traffic lights to change, but Seoul isn't like that. South Korea is slightly odd from a motorcycling point of
view. From 1972 onwards motorcycles were completely forbidden from the motorways, something that South Korea shares with Taiwan and nowhere else. The official view appears to be that all motorcycles are 50cc
scooters and are thus unsafe on high-speed roads, so as a consequence the market in South Korea for full-sized touring bikes is limited.
One side-effect of this rule is that it's not possible to ride a motorcycle from Seoul to nearby Incheon Airport, because the only two roads leading there are motorways. This is awkward if you're doing an international motorcycle tour. You have to transport your motorcycle on a ferry to Wolmido, on the shores of Incheon, and make your way via the A-roads and B-roads to Seoul, with the complicating factor that some roads start off as A-roads and then seamlessly turn into motorways.
I saw only a handful of larger bikes, including this fetching Honda Rebel 500 outside the COEX mall:
And this BMW G310GS further afield. It
seemed huge in context, but it's actually the smallest of BMW's adventure bikes:
I did spot a few other mid-to-small-capacity bikes here and there. In Itaewon,
not far from
a famous bookshop, I saw this fetching Honda GB350C:
The basic design has been on sale in Japan since 2020, but it wasn't launched in the UK until 2025, as the Honda GB350S. It's keenly priced at £3999, exactly the same as the Super Cub pictured up the page. Traditionally, motorcyclists in the UK train on a 125cc before passing their test and buying a 600cc model, but the 300-400cc segment has expanded in recent years. How come? My hunch is that a mixture of soaring insurance premiums, general economic malaise, and potholes have made small-capacity bikes attractive again. The GB350S competes directly with Royal Enfield's 350cc models, and also the slightly more expensive Triumph 400 Scrambler. It is by all accounts nifty, although in my opinion the bright paint scheme makes the tank look slightly too large.
Back in 2021 Seoul's government declared that 100% of delivery bikes would be electric by 2025. However it seems that this was merely a symbolic target,
and the actual percentage of electric delivery bikes in 2025 was 3-4%.
So the government has instead declared that 60% of new delivery motorcycle sales will be electric
by the year 2035, which sounds a lot more achievable. I did bump into this, which admittedly isn't a delivery bike:
It's a Super Soco TC. It looks fantastic, but unfortunately it's only
equivalent to a 50cc scooter, with a top speed of around 30mph and a range of
45 miles. In the UK it sells for around £3000. I have no idea how much it
sells for in Korea. There were also a fair amount of these electric fun
scooters:
There were fewer delivery motorcycles than I expected. Seoul was full of cars, including a lot of electric models, which I could tell from the quiet swoosh they made as they started up. Motorcycle delivery drivers were in the minority, but they did still have a presence. In this photo notice the chap pushing his bike across the pedestrian crossing. I think the idea is that if they use their feet, they are a pedestrian:
Perhaps Seoul is gentrifying, and people are swapping their Super Cubs for cars, or perhaps the people of Seoul already have everything they need. A lot of the Super Cubs I saw were actually Korean clones, such as this fetching Daelim Citi Ace, which seems to have an auxiliary fuel tank attached where the rider's knees go ordinarily. Or is it a small helmet box?
Here's another Citi Ace, with big handwarmers, which must have come in handy given that the temperature was around minus eleven centigrade:
Just along the road from the Honda GB350 was this elderly, denuded Super Cub, which looked to be in working condition, although it may well have just been a living billboard.
Along Toegye-ro street I stumbled on a row of shops selling motorcycles,
including this Honda Grom with the seat still wrapped in plastic:
The Grom would be perfect in Seoul's traffic. I think the bike in green, just behind the Grom, is a Honda Trail 125, which sadly isn't sold in the UK. Sandwiched between the two is, yes, another Super Cub.
I have no idea of the
legality of foreign ownership of motorcycles in Korea. I only
stayed for a couple of weeks, and Seoul has an extensive metro system, so I didn't need my own transport. It seems that I can swap my existing UK
licence for a 125cc licence, but for anything over that there's a MOD 1-style
gymkhana test that involves doing a lot of right-angled turns between a pair
of closely-spaced lines. The supplied bike is a chopper-style
cruiser rather than something more agile.
This chap covers the test, which actually doesn't look all that hard, but then
again he's a highly-experienced motorcyclist and I am not. My guess is that
nerves of steel are a massive asset:
Seoul also has a fair amount of three-wheeler delivery bikes, some of which looked
purpose-made, others looked to have been customised. The three-wheeler at the
top here has MONO written on the side, but I couldn't find anything about it.
Just beneath it is a Daelim VS 125 cruiser-style bike, and below that is, I
think, an early-90s Honda CB125T, although the plastics don't quite match the
photos I can find.
Perhaps it's a Franken-bike made out of lots of different components. As I walked away the Honda's owner got on, and it started first time, so there's a lot to be said for thirty-year-old Hondas. Every time your motorcycle fails to start, remember that there are people in Seoul buzzing around in January in temperatures of minus eleven centigrade on thirty-year-old Hondas.
