Subway; Metro System of Seoul

Have a nice day, happily ever after ^^

In this blog, I will introduce you a little bit of the metro system of Seoul city. There are a lot of lines under the ground of Seoul. Since almost half of population of S. Korea lives in this small city, the city was required to be equiped with efficient transportation network system. Oh, by the way, Korea was the first Asain country which had a rail road... Although it was implemented by Japanese people for the purpose of transporting military supplies to Northern area of China, Korea is the country which had the very first rail road among Asian countries...

This is the map of subway roads. I zoomed the centre of the whole map... I usually say that it is quite impossible in Seoul to be lost... since you always can find a subway station nearby you. Plus, you may transfer from subway to bus and from bus to subway. You don't have to pay twice if you have a transportation-card (T-money). T-money card can be used in taxis and some stores, too.

Here are some actually pictures of metros in Seoul... taken by my friend in school.
He's kinda mad for trains... :P

We can see "KoRAIL". There are two big companies (each owned by Seoul city and Government) running the subway system. Most of the trains go under ground; however, sometimes, they do come up.

This one is the newest line. We've just finished establishing the 9th subway line... The train for the line 9 is a little bit small... I have no clue why... I guess it was either becuase of the financial problems or geological ones... but it's just a guess...

How fancy it is! ha ha :) Well, unlike european metros, since Korean ones are bulit quite recently compared to them, we do have clean, neat, wide, tall and exquisite stations... Oh, the height is tall as well... The glass screen doors are recently equipped... to prevent some people from jumping to the running metro trains.

Besides those screen doors, Korean government added some special devices on the bridge as well to prevent the jumpers who commit suicide on the river Han bridges. It was quite a fashion to jump over there. Not that it was like every other minutes... but for the sake of the conductor and citizens... they started to set them the screen doors.

The board tells you where is the next train and when it is coming to the station.

Here is another angle. You may see the escalator. Not so many subway stations have escalators down to the platform. It is common to have them to connect under ground lv 1 to ground...

Plus, you can find a black sign board at the picture too. It tells us where the next subway is and sometimes show us some commercials... We once had commercial boards on the wall pillars. However, after setting the screen doors, they disappeared.

This line 9 stations are quite luxarious since they're newest and it was built with private investment. It looks as if it is somewhat international airport. But I guess it will cost a lot to maintain the cleaness as well... um... :P

This is line 4. After we had a terrible accident (there was a fire. One man fired the subway because of his misery) in Daegu subway lines, all the subway seats were replaced by fire-resistent and less smoke making ones...



Recently the government is planning to make a new composition of those seats... for now, they're just probing though... They are thinking about having the seats' back attached to each other so that the people sitting on the seats can see the window directly without making awkward eye-contacts.... I think that's an idea... although, the model seemed quite unnatrul... because the people who cannot sit have to be seperated into two lines and the movements of the passengers were terribly interupted by the seats...

and for last... Korean metros have special places as well... It is the seats for elders, pregnants, and the disable. The buses have them as well. Although, it was an etiquette to yield a seat for seniors in this country for a long time, since individualism took over the main fashion, not so many keep the old tradition; so, they made this seats... however, there are only 12 seats for one carrige so we cannot say that it is enough measurement... but well, what can we do about it?!