It's 1 a.m., the subway has stopped running, and the taxi line is long. Then a blue bus pulls up at the stop. There's an "N" in front of its number. A foreign student, "Is there a bus even at this hour?" once said that in surprise. This bus is the owl bus. ## The N before the number stands for night N means "night." Buses with this letter run after the last regular bus has stopped. Their routes and times are different from the daytime buses, so you shouldn't assume they're the same just because the number is the same. ## You drew a route over the phone? An owl is a bird that stays awake at night. The name isn't just cute. When Seoul City created this bus in 2013, it looked at mobile phone call data. Using anonymous numbers, they looked at where people were making a lot of calls late at night. That way, you can tell where people are gathered at that hour. They connected the places crowded with people at night to draw the route. So they didn't cut back the daytime routes; they built a brand-new road for people of the night. ## Check before you ride Fares and bus intervals may change. Search for the 'N' number in a map app or the Seoul public transit app. You can see which buses are coming from your current location and their arrival times. Open the app before you even get to the bus stop.