Seoul to Replace All Subway Fabric Chairs With Plastic

This photo provided by Seoul Metro on April 2, 2024, shows a worker hot-steaming fabric seats in a subway car. (Image courtesy of Yonhap)

SEOUL, Apr. 2 (Korea Bizwire) — Seoul Metro, the operator of subway lines 1-8, said Tuesday that it will replace all fabric chairs with reinforced plastic chairs by 2029 to keep the subways clean from bedbugs and other pollutants.

Fabric currently accounts for 54 percent of all subway seats operated by the city-run corporation, followed by reinforced plastic (29 percent) and stainless seats (17 percent).

First of all, fabric seats in 340 subway cars on Line 3, which are due for replacement, will be replaced with reinforced plastic chairs at a budget of 4.5 billion won (US$3.3 million), it said, adding the replacement of fabric chairs in all other subway cars will be completed by 2029.

Seoul Metro said the chair replacement will be pushed to calm people’s anxiety about bedbugs, though there have been no actual cases of such an insect found inside subway cars. The company received 66 reports of suspected bedbugs from last October and March but not a single bug was verified.

But Seoul Metro said it does not rule out the possibility of bedbugs being brought into subway cars through passengers’ clothing and baggage. For that reason, the company has been regularly carrying out chemical pest control based on high-temperature steam cleaning so that people can use subways without anxiety.

(Yonhap)