Seoul OpenData MCP

한국어 README 보기

An MCP server that wraps Seoul's real-time city data (Seoul Open Data Plaza) so Claude — or any MCP client — can answer questions like:

"지금 강남역 혼잡도 어때?" / "Is Gangnam crowded right now?"

...using live population, commercial-activity, subway, bike-share, parking, road-traffic, cultural-event, air-quality and weather data, plus batch statistics (subway ridership, living population, real-estate prices), pharmacy operating hours, and a searchable catalog of 28 raw Seoul Open Data datasets — for Seoul, with zero setup beyond an API key.

Quick Start — Claude Desktop

Add this to your claude_desktop_config.json (config file location):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "seoul-opendata": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "seoul-opendata-mcp"],
      "env": { "SEOUL_API_KEY": "YOUR_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop and the 19 tools below become available.

Related MCP server: k-skill-korea

Claude Code

claude mcp add seoul-opendata -e SEOUL_API_KEY=YOUR_KEY -- npx -y seoul-opendata-mcp

Getting API Keys (5 minutes)

The server works out of the box in sample mode (see limits below), but real keys remove the limits and are free:

1. Sign in (or sign up) at data.seoul.go.kr.

2. Open the authentication-key request page ("인증키 신청") and submit the short application form.

3. The key is issued immediately — no waiting for approval.

4. Put it in SEOUL_API_KEY (as shown above) and restart your MCP client.

Without SEOUL_API_KEY, the server falls back to a built-in sample key: the citydata-family tools (get_city_snapshot, get_population, get_commercial_activity, get_road_traffic, get_weather, get_disaster_alerts) only work for the single 광화문·덕수궁 (Gwanghwamun·Deoksugung) hotspot, and the other tools return at most 5 rows. Every sample-mode response includes a note reminding you of this.

There are two keys in total:

• SEOUL_API_KEY — the general key, used by every tool except realtime subway arrivals.

• SEOUL_SUBWAY_API_KEY — a separate key for get_subway_arrivals (realtime subway arrivals), requested independently on data.seoul.go.kr. Optional — if unset, the server falls back to SEOUL_API_KEY.

Local development with .env

Copy .env.example to .env and fill in your key(s):

cp .env.example .env
# then edit .env: SEOUL_API_KEY=... (and optionally SEOUL_SUBWAY_API_KEY=...)

.env is listed in .gitignore and is never committed — only the empty .env.example template is tracked in the repo.

Tools

19 tools grouped into 8 categories:

Coverage & Limits

• 121 official hotspots, 5 official categories — search_place, get_city_snapshot, get_population, get_road_traffic, and get_weather only cover these named locations: palaces & cultural heritage (고궁·문화유산), tourist zones (관광특구), parks (공원), commercial districts (발달상권), and dense hotspots (인구밀집지역).

• Commercial activity: 82 of the 121 hotspots — get_commercial_activity returns supported: false with nearby alternatives for the other 39.

• Population has ~15 minutes of delay — it's a telecom-based estimate with correction, not instantaneous.

• Free quota is ~1,000 calls/day per key — the server caches responses in memory (60s for city data, 5 min for air/bike/parking, 1 hour for cultural events) to help stay within this.

• Bike stations, parking lots, air quality, cultural events, subway arrivals, pharmacies, and the batch statistics tools are not limited to the 121 hotspots — they cover their respective full Seoul-wide datasets (e.g. all 25 districts for air quality, ~3,000 bike stations).

• Catalog tools cover 28 curated datasets — search_dataset / get_dataset_spec / call_dataset give raw access to datasets that don't (yet) have a dedicated normalized tool.

Data Attribution

Data is provided by the Seoul Open Data Plaza (서울 열린데이터광장, data.seoul.go.kr) "Seoul Real-time City Data" (서울 실시간 도시데이터) service, which fuses telecom population data (KT/SKT), card-payment data (Shinhan Card), and transit tap-in/tap-out data (Tmoney), along with the Seoul public bike, parking, air-quality, cultural-event, and subway-arrival open APIs.

Example Prompts

• "지금 강남역 혼잡도 어때?" — congestion level right now

• "홍대 앞으로 12시간 동안 인구가 어떻게 변할까?" — 12-hour population forecast

• "성수동 상권 요즘 분위기 어때?" — commercial activity trend

• "여의도 근처에 따릉이 자전거 있어?" — nearby Ttareungi bike availability

• "이번 주말 마포구 무료 공연 있어?" — free cultural events this weekend

• "오늘 강남구 미세먼지 어때?" — today's fine dust level

• "어제 강남역 승하차 몇 명이야?" — yesterday's boarding/alighting count at Gangnam station

• "서울 공공와이파이 데이터 찾아줘" — find Seoul's public WiFi dataset

License

MIT © 2026 whchoi98