One Bullet, Two Volts: How Seoul's Metro Was Born
The story of Seoul Metro Line 1 and its consequences
It is past 11 a.m. in Seoul on August 15, 1974, the 29th birthday of the Republic of Korea. The mood on the platform at Cheongnyangni Station is tense and sombre. Cameramen and journalists have fled the station already. After confusion and a previous cancellation, the ribbon is brought back out to be cut. The Mayor of Seoul and three government officials are rushed out to line up and cut the ribbon. None of the men smile for the cameras.
And so, under the most awkward, funereal atmosphere, Seoul opened South Korea’s first-ever subway line. It is hard to imagine a more uncertain and confusing beginning to one of the most celebrated urban mass transit networks in the world — now expanded to nine Metro lines, several more commuter lines, and a national high-speed rail network centralized around the capital city. But perhaps such dispositions were an appropriate mood for the event: Line 1 would grow beyond the original planners’ wildest expectations and its unconstrained growth will reshape not only Seoul’s mass transit but Seoul and the country themselves. The history leading to Line 1’s creation is also marked by volatility and violence — quite neatly in line with that of the Korean peninsula in the 20th century.
Why were the men who cut the ribbon so sad?
Seoul’s turbulent rail beginnings
1899 was the birthyear for rail in the Korean peninsula, with the advent of two separate railways connecting Seoul — then called Gyeongseong, the capital city of the Joseon Dynasty — in two different directions. First was the Gyeongin Railway which connected Gyeongseong to the port city of Incheon to its west in September. (Note the portmanteau “Gyeong” “In”, a common wordplay in Korean) Under the American entrepreneur James R. Morse, the Gyeongin Railway connected Incheon’s port district of Jemulpo to Noryangjin, a port on the south bank of the Han River.1 A year later, the Gyeongin Railway crossed the Han River and terminated at the current Seoul Station north of the river.
Second was the opening of Gyeongseong’s first tram line in May 1899. Also built by Americans Henry Collbran and Harry Bostwick, the line started right outside Daehan Gate at Deoksu Palace, where King Gojong resided. The line travelled north up Sejongro, turned right on Jongro and travelled east past Dongdaemun (East Gate) to terminated next to rice fields of Cheongnyangni. The last leg to Cheongnyangni was more for symbolism than logistics; Cheongnyangni was where the tomb of Gojong’s wife, Queen Min, was buried after she was murdered by Japanese assassins in Gyeongbok Palace in 1895.2 As much as urban connectivity as priority, this first tram line was built as a reminder of a recent historical injustice and a play at the king’s own heartstrings by extending a literal train line from his palatial footsteps directly to his slain wife’s tomb. Despite the emotional charge at patriotism, locals near the tram line rioted against it, seeing it as a foreign intrusion on the local feng shui and threat to their properties.3
Once Japan annexed Korea in 1910 and abolished the 505-year-old Joseon Dynasty, rail played a crucial role in the Japanese colonial management of economic growth and resource extraction. Gyeongseong, now called Keijo under Japanese rule, became the epicenter of a national rail network which connected the southern port cities of Busan, Mokpo, Gunsan, and Incheon to the industrial northern cities of Pyeongyang, Wonsan, and Sinuiju, the last of which extended into Manchuria. Under Japanese rule, Keijo’s tram network expanded as its new centers around Japanese-populous neighborhoods in the southern half of Keijo, around what is now Euljiro (then called Kogane-cho) and Toegyero (then called Honmachi). Yongsan Station, outside the city walls and located next to the Japanese Army Headquarters south of Seoul Station, emerged as a new railway hub for colonial affairs. Japanese soldiers, Korean forced labor, rice, and other materiel departed from or passed through Yongsan Station as Japan’s wartime efforts grew in the 1930s and 1940s until Japan’s surrender on August 15, 1945.4
The Korean War between June 1950 and July 1953 had a devastating impact on Seoul’s railways. All bridges crossing the Han River were destroyed and railway tracks and depots were targeted by aerial bombings on both sides; for example, a recent declassified CIA record confirmed the US Air Force targeted Yongsan Station and nearby Haebangchon neighborhood — then packed with refugees fleeing the north — repeatedly with B-29 bombers in September 1950, resulting in total devastation of rail infrastructure around Yongsan and the refugee camps at Haebangchon, resulting in thousands of civilians dead.5 For the Seoul tram network, the war crippled their operations beyond full repair: nearly one-ninth of its trackage and nearly half of its streetcars were rendered unusable, and countless catenaries and equipment were looted by desperate civilians.6
Despite restarting service in 1952 and entering peacetime following the Korean War’s armistice in 1953, the Seoul tram network struggled due to its wartime damages. In the 1950s, Seoul received nearly 60 trams from the United States to shore its depleted rolling stock: nearly 20 from the Atlanta streetcar system, discontinued in 1949, and nearly 40 from the Pacific Electric Railway Company in Los Angeles, which too was on its decline.7 However, the Seoul tram network continued to decline under aging infrastructure and growing deficits due to a government-imposed fare freeze. Under a fast-growing Seoul with rising rates of automobile ownership by a small but emergent urban middle class in the 1960s, the Seoul government put the kibosh on the nearly 70-year-old tram network. Concrete was poured over discontinued tram lines across Seoul. The last tram in Seoul ran for service on November 30, 1968.
Video timelapse of the growth and dismantling of the Seoul tram system, with advent of Line 1, between 1899 and 1970
“If you build this subway, the country will be in ruins”
Between 1955 and 1970, the population in the city of Seoul more than tripled from 1.6 million to 5.5 million, as displaced postwar families from both North and South moved in search of industrial jobs.8 Traffic jams became an increasingly common sight, with trams offering little relief. After 1968, buses and automobiles were the only modes of moving within the city of Seoul. Intercity trains connecting Seoul, Yongsan, and Cheongnangnyi stations to Incheon to the west, Suwon to the south, and Baengmagoji to the north (part of a line to Wonsan in North Korea, now disconnected) ushered in and out commuters to add to Seoul’s crowding issues.
The first discussions of a subway line in Seoul were recorded in 1958, under Rhee Syngman’s presidency, a surprisingly early register for a rebuilding South Korean government looking toward its future.9 In 1965, Seoul Mayor Kim Hyun-ok unveiled his plans for a four-line Seoul subway system, with Line 1 as an underground tunnel through central Seoul connecting to the intercity lines at Seoul Station in the west and Cheongnangnyi station in the east. As an aggressive and haphazard builder-mayor of a rapidly industrializing metropolis, Kim dreamed of a subway network before he was forced to resign in 1970, after a public apartment built under Kim’s administration collapsed and killed 34 residents.10
Kim was succeeded by Yang Taek-sik as Seoul Mayor, a like-minded mayor who built on Kim’s subway dreams. Yang modified Kim’s four-line plan, with the Line 1 tunnel running up north up Sejongro, then a sharp right on Jongro heading east to Cheongnyangni — a near-identical route as the first tram line of heavy symbolism built under King Gojong. Shortly after his promotion on April 1970, Yang made subway construction a key priority and directly inquired President Park Chung-hee to green light the project.
Then Vice Prime Minster and Minister of Economy Kim Hak-ryeol, however, vehemently opposed Yang’s proposal for a Seoul subway. Kim asserted to Park that a subway construction would increase prices, accelerate Seoul’s ongoing population explosion, and unduly test South Korea’s developing economy; in one conversation with Park, Kim warned “if you build this subway, the country will be ruins”.11 One story believes Kim’s opposition was not economics but personal politics: he was furious at Yang for bypassing him and asking Park directly. Another story goes Park was on the fence about Yang’s request until he met the Japanese Ambassador to South Korea. The ambassador told Park "the subway is a global trend. In the case of Tokyo, citizens cannot live a day without the subway. Therefore you will have to build one.”12 Park soon gave Yang his blessings to build a four-line subway network, beginning with the Line 1 tunnel between Seoul Station and Cheongnangnyi Station.
In the summer of 1970, Park solicited the help of Japanese expertise to plan and oversee construction and import Line 1’s first rolling stock, since South Korea did not yet have any experience running a subway. Plans for the first four lines of the Seoul subway was finalized in October, with Line 1 construction to begin shortly after. Under Japanese recommendations, Lines 2, 3, and 4 plans were also completed: Line 2 would connect Gimpo International Airport to Euljiro and the newly annexed and then-undeveloped Gangnam; Line 3 would make a U-shaped line north of the Han River; and Line 4 an upside-down U-shape connecting south of the Han River suburbs to the city center. But in theme with the turbulence of Seoul’s rail history, little of this plan would stay in place.
A dig at the heart of Seoul
On April 12, 1971, Seoul’s Line 1 celebrated the start of its tunnel construction under a huge celebration in front of Seoul City Hall with performances and fireworks. The approximately 10.3 kilometer, 9-stations tunnel — then commonly called the Jongro Line — was the first urban mass rail endeavor in South Korean history and cost 33,000,000,000 Won. (Approximately $95 million USD in 1971 exchange rates)13 One newspaper in 1973 calculated the Jongro Line’s per-meter construction at 277,000 Won ($81 USD) and found it was at least half of what London, Paris, and Osaka paid for their subway tunneling projects.14 (Albeit Korea’s GDP in the early 1970s was still considerably behind Japan or Western Europe)
To bookend the feud between Yang the Seoul Mayor and Kim the Vice Prime Minister, the central government only funded 10% of the project, a tacit refusal by Kim and his administration to believe in the utility of a Seoul subway. The city government picked up the rest of the tab.
For the construction workers, the project’s comparatively affordability did not mean the tunneling was any easier. The entirety of the Jongro Line was constructed using the cut-and-cover method, and the open excavation work encountered three problems: first, great care was taken to not damage the Joseon-era city gates Namdaemun near City Hall Station and Dongdaemun near Dongdaemun Station; second, the workers constantly ran into underground streams and creeks, of which there were many in central Seoul and fed into larger above-ground streams like Cheonngyecheon; and third, the aforementioned sharp right turn from Sejongro to Jongro needed to be built under one of the densest intersections of the city replete with skyscrapers.15 Resolving these issues — while learning the engineering of subway construction on the fly with help from the Japanese — the rather short tunneling took three whole years to complete.
The major conundrum for subway planners was not the tunnels or tracks but the electricity to power the trains. The Japanese consultants recommended that Line 1 trains be powered using 25000V 60Hz alternate current (AC), as a common utility frequency already used on existent Line 1 branches extending from Seoul to Incheon, Suwon, and others. However, other government agencies, such as the telephone utility, recommended a 1500V direct current in the tunnel, arguing electrifying the tunnel with AC will not only add further costs to the construction but the tunnel’s central location in Seoul may contribute to potential widespread telephone outages.16
When the first Line 1 rolling stock arrived at the Port of Busan in April 1974, the Hitachi-built train cars were built to support both currents and convert between AC and DC. The fateful voltage decision can still be felt on Line 1 to this day; if on a Line 1 train traveling outbound south of Seoul Station or east of Cheongnyangni Station, the train will play an automated announcement that the train will be switching power sources soon and lights inside the train will turn off for a second or two before lighting back up again.17
What happened on August 15, 1974
Cheongnyangni Station was brightly decorated on August 15, 1974 for the ribbon-cutting ceremony of Line 1. Seoul Mayor Yang was already posted at the station to greet President Park and his First Lady, Yuk Young-soo.
An hour before the ceremony, Park and Yuk were at the National Theater of Korea to attend a live-televised Independence Day ceremony. At 10:23 a.m., Park was at the podium giving a speech when a Japanese-born Korean named Mun Se-gwang approached Park and prematurely fired his revolver. Park ducked behind the podium. Running down the theater aisle, Mun fired four more shots wildly at the stage. The fourth bullet struck Yuk, who was sitting on stage, in the head. A shoot-out between Mun and Park’s security killed a high school student in attendance. Yuk was hurriedly rushed to a hospital. Mun was captured shortly after. Park finished his speech, picked up his wife’s handbag and shoes and left the stage. The melee was broadcast on live television, to the horror and shock of the nation.18
![r/HistoryPorn - First Lady of South Korea Yuk Young-soo slumps down after being shot by a North Korean sympathiser, during an assasination attempt on her husband President of South Korea Park Chung-hee, on Korean Independence Day ceremony at the National Theater of Korea in Seoul - 1974 [764x568]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F458252d1-69c1-4f9d-97fa-ab629d9d3c92_640x475.jpeg "r/HistoryPorn - First Lady of South Korea Yuk Young-soo slumps down after being shot by a North Korean sympathiser, during an assasination attempt on her husband President of South Korea Park Chung-hee, on Korean Independence Day ceremony at the National Theater of Korea in Seoul - 1974 [764x568]")
According to legendary television journalist Cha In-tae, Park and Yuk were to arrive at Cheongnyangni Station shortly after 11 a.m. and take the first Line 1 train to Seoul Station. Instead, shortly after 11 a.m., security agents flooded the platform, guns drawn, and barred anyone from leaving or entering.19 They cancelled the event without explaining why but reinstated it shortly after.
Yuk later that day would die at the age of 48. During his trial, Mun would confess to being a sympathizer of North Korea and was aided by North Korean-aligned organization in his native Japan. Mun would be found guilty and was executed by hanging in December 1974.
Yuk’s assassination would carry ripple effects through many channels of South Korean history, some more obvious than others. Perhaps the most direct effect was the ascendancy of Park and Yuk’s daughter, Park Geun-hye, as the replacement First Lady after Yuk’s death, thus beginning Park Geun-hye’s political career. Park Geun-hye’s rise after South Korea’s democratization in 1987 would climax in 2012, when she was elected the first female president of South Korea. Park Geun-hye would also become the first impeached South Korean president five years later.
Yuk’s assassination would also transform Seoul and its Metro system in profound and unexpected ways. Seoul Mayor Yang Taek-sik would be forced to resign the next month, as he was responsible for security details at the Independence Day event in the National Theater. Yang was replaced by Koo Ja-chun, a former military officer.
Legend has it in February 1975, Mayor Koo came into a meeting with heads of city planning and subway planners to discuss the yet-to-be-constructed Line 2. As aforementioned, Line 2 under Yang’s plan was a west-east line through Euljiro. Grabbing a black pencil, Koo walked over to the large map of Seoul in the room and drew a large circle around Seoul. As he drew the circle, Koo pointed out that certain facilities — such as the industrial factories in the Guro neighborhood and the Seoul National University — needed to be served by Line 2. Koo’s circular exercise took no more than 20 minutes, as the story goes, and Line 2 plans were complete.20
Opened in segments between 1980 and 1983, Line 2 as a circular line would profoundly reshape Seoul’s landscape, not unlike how the Yamanote Line remade Tokyo in the early 20th century. First, Line 2 is by far the busiest line of all nine Seoul Metro lines, registering more than 2.2 million passengers per day in 2019. Second, Line 2 connected existing landmarks such as Euljiro, Seoul National University, and Ehwa Women’s University with upcoming ones such as the Jamsil Sports Complex for the 1988 Summer Olympics. Lastly, and perhaps most consequentially, Line 2 was critical in spurring development in previously sleepy suburban areas of Seoul south of the Han River, such as Yeouido (where the National Assembly is now and the new political center of Seoul), Seongsu (the new “Brooklyn” hipster hotspot district), and Gangnam of global soft power repute. Without a circular Line 2, the Gangnam we know today may not exist.
Following Line 2’s transformation, Line 3 and Line 4 — the last two lines in the 1965 plan for a Seoul subway — would also dramatically realign its route, with both lines cutting through Seoul in a rough X-shape and conjoining at Chungmuro Station. Both lines opened for service in 1985.
Lastly, Yuk’s death greatly impacted Park Chung-hee, the presidential widower. Park’s biographers write the shock of seeing his wife’s death at an attempt on his life let him to heavy drinking and smoking. Shortly after his wife’s death, Park turned over many officials, such as Mayor Yang, with younger acolytes in his inner circle. One such man on the rise was Kim Jae-gyu, the Deputy Director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) who was appointed the Minister of Construction, a highly influential position in the fast-growing Korean economy, in September 1974. Often doted as a younger brother by Park per observers, Kim would be promoted to KCIA Director two years later to oversee Park’s surveillance state. On October 26, 1979, at a private dinner banquet, Kim would shoot and kill Park in point-blank range, ending Park’s 18-year rule and hurtling South Korea into a chaotic new era.
Line 1’s remaking of South Korea
Seoul Metro Line 1 is unlike any Metro line in the world. At 102 stations and 218 kilometers in total length (135 miles), Line 1 is less a conventional urban Metro line and more an octopus-like regional super-connector, stretching its limbs far out west to the Port of Incheon, north to the town of Yeoncheon just 11 kilometers from the DMZ with North Korea, and south to the town of Shinchang 87 kilometers south of Seoul Station. Shinchang, the southern terminus, is so far away it resides two provinces over from Seoul.
Line 1 has five total branches and five rapid and express train types. No one train can serve all the stations, but even regular service is a massive odyssey: a local train from Incheon to Yeoncheon, for example, would stop at a whopping 66 stations and take 3 hours long to complete one-way.
All Seoul Metro lines except Line 1 built the entirety of their lines from scratch. Whereas the other eight Metro lines focus on serving only Seoul and its immediate satellite cities, Line 1 serves the widest spectrum of urban/rural interfaces imaginable: on a single Line 1 ride, a passenger will pass through the perennially bustling Seoul Station and nearby Jongro, skyscraper-decked planned suburbs of Bucheon, Osan, and Dongtan, and far-flung rural outposts of populations less than 10,000 in the area.
On Line 1, one can see the full strata of South Korean society in one train ride. Line 1 is a popular hangout spot for seniors over the age of 65, who in Seoul can ride the Metro for free. Many seniors ride the trains for hours to kill time. Line 1 also carries among locals a reputation where one can observe urban disorder and antisocial behaviors — relatively more so than other public spaces in a rather rigid, orderly society — with frequently noticed “villains” in attention-grabbing costumes or shocking antics disrupting commuters and going viral on the Internet.
Line 1 itself from conception was an oddity: a short subway tunnel in the heart of Seoul as the missing link to bring several conventional intercity rail lines under one Metro line. With no prior construction experience and very limited central government backing, projects like Line 1 often die on the vines before the first shovel dig. Thanks to the visions of mayors like Kim Hyun-ok and Yang Taek-sik, who understood a growing metropolis needed a mass transit network like a Metro, Seoul not only finished Line 1 but all four lines of Kim’s original plan. The “first generation” of these four lines in the 1970s and 1980s would spur a “second generation” of Seoul Metro lines — Lines 5 through 8 — to be opened between 1995 and 2000. Seoul has ceaselessly grown out its urban rail network thereafter, as the construction dynamo set in Jongro in 1971 churns on to this day.
https://en.namu.wiki/w/경인선
Henry, Todd A. Assimilating Seoul : Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945. Berkeley, University Of California Press, 2016, p. 27.
Ibid.
https://www.korea.net/NewsFocus/Society/view?articleId=149282
https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1146596.html
https://namu.wiki/w/서울%20전차
Ibid.
https://data.si.re.kr/data/통계로-본-서울-영문판/325
https://youtube.com/watch?v=L1oC3tVoGj4
https://namu.wiki/w/와우시민아파트%20붕괴%20사고?from=와우%20시민아파트%20붕괴사고
https://n.news.naver.com/mnews/article/079/0000051989?sid=102
Ibid.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/PA.NUS.FCRF?locations=KR
https://youtube.com/watch?v=L1oC3tVoGj4
https://youtube.com/watch?v=alR3gx904NQ
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y-FZJWaS3BM
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z8MPg_LSjy4
https://en.namu.wiki/w/박정희%20대통령%20저격%20미수%20사건
https://youtube.com/watch?v=t27vguxShS8
https://namu.wiki/w/서울%20지하철%202호선/역사
This is a really informative, super interesting piece. Thank you very much for your effort!
Amazing how you seamlessly weave the historical and political events into the development of Seoul's Metro network.