South Korea’s bullet train, called the KTX for Korea Train Express links Seoul and Busan's about 400 kilometers. It is also a symbol of the country‘s technological power.But the KTX has 37 mechanical problems this year that are considered major, those lasting at least 10 minutes. That rose up from 25 such incidents for all of last year.
The latest incident happened on Sunday when the train stopped in the middle of a 6 mile tunnel from 10 kilometers from Busan and left about 400 people in delay for an hour with no air conditioning.
On Monday, the Board of Audit and Inspection investigated the state run operator to see if the problems were not just technological. The main cause of the delay was a missing piece in the rail itself and careless mistakes by the railroad officials.
The speed on the KTX will be increased so that all the country’s major cities will be within 90 minutes of each other by 2020. By that year, the KTX is forecast to account for 27.3% of inter-city passenger transportation, up from the current 15.9%. More speed, more danger, many passengers are scared.
(아주경제 송지영 기자)
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com