Seoul Metropolitan Subway System

Seoul Metro Subway

Being in Korea for almost half of the year,  I found that the transportation system in Korea is very nice. In every city, they have well-scheduled buses with convenient seats. Their subway system is even more amazing. Built underneath the main road, their subway is very well organized with a very tight scheduling. Moreover, those 2 transportation methods are integrated in one system so that passengers can transfer one to another freely using the “transportation card,”  which can be bought in every subway station or many small vendors nearby downtown or bus stations.

To be able to describe its greatness, I’d like to put my focus on the Subway System of Seoul Metropolitan, the capital of South Korea. The reason why I choset this city is because there are almost 4 million (4.000.000) passengers per day using the subway system of Seoul Metropolitan City.

In order to provide the best transportation system for its people, the government has built 4 lines in Seoul Subway system; 10 stations in Line 1, 50 stations in Line 2, 31 stations in Line 3 and 26 stations in Line 4, which means there are 117 subway stations in the entire Seoul Subway system.

Since the subway is so convenient, Seoul subway system is rated 4th largest passengers in the world with 1.4 billion passengers per day. The 3 cities before Seoul are Tokyo, Moscow, and New York. The average of passengers daily is 3.960.000 riders per day; 4 times of it will be similar to the number of Seoul total residents. If we calculate the number of passengers since the first built of the subway, there have been 30 billion people has utilized this subway, that’s around 5 time of population of the entire world, and 612 times Korean population. And if those peole were standing apart 1 meter from each other, they would circle the globe for 750 times.

Inside Seoul Metro Subway

The total route of this subway system is so long, 134.9 km which means almost similar to the distance from Seoul to Daejeon. wow!!! More interestingly, the total distance in which the subway has operated is 500 million kilometers! More than enough to travel back and forth to the Sun which takes only 300 million kilometers.

Operated since the August 15th, 1974, this subway station has been unsparateable part of citizen’s life.  The building of the system was started in 1970 when the government decided to build “Subway Construction Headquarter” (which later renamed to Subway  Headquarter in 1974). On August 15th, 1974 they opened 7.8 km of Line 1 linking Seoul Station
and Cheongnyangni, initiating the subway for the city, then 4 years later, they started building the 2nd line which then started to operate in 1984.  One year later,they opened for the 3rd and 4th line which they then extent for longer route in years after.

Seoul Metro Map

In 2005, the Subway Headquarter renamed to “Seoul Metro” as well as changing its logo and characters.  It also then set up platform screen door (PSD) at Sadang Station being the first in korea. In 2006, it also started giving customer service for better service toward its people.

That’s it guys. Hope it gives you some idea about Seoul Subway system. See you guys in the next posting.

best regards,

~nasikun

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