Walk around Seoul and you'll notice something strange: there are almost no public trash cans anywhere — and yet the streets are remarkably clean. How does that even work? And why did Korea get rid of its bins in the first place?

In this episode of The Story Real Korea, we bust a popular myth (no, it wasn't a terror attack — you may be thinking of Japan), and dig into the real reason: the 1995 volume-based waste fee that made people dump household trash in public bins, prompting cities to pull thousands of them off the streets. We get into how the "pay-as-you-throw" system works, the high-tech RFID food-waste bins, why Korea recycles so aggressively, and the recent push to bring some bins back.

A tiny everyday mystery that reveals a lot about how Korea actually runs.

In this episode: • The missing-bins mystery • The myth vs. the  ...