Cool it on train temperature complaints, Seoul Metro says

Seoul Metro has called on passengers to refrain from filing temperature-related complaints on trains, saying the volume has made it harder to respond to urgent issues.

The photo shows a Seoul Subway Line No. 5 train [YONHAP]

Seoul Metro has called on passengers to refrain from filing temperature-related complaints on trains, saying the volume has made it harder to respond to urgent issues.

From May to July this year, the subway operator received more than 340,000 complaints about heating and cooling, an average of 3,520 per day, the operator said Wednesday. Expanding the period to January through July, the number rose to 505,000 cases, accounting for 79.6 percent of all complaints to its customer service.

Of those, 472,000 were from passengers saying it was too hot, far outnumbering the 33,000 who complained of being too cold.

“We are working to create a comfortable subway environment,” said Ma Hae-geun, head of Seoul Metro’s operations division. “We ask passengers to refrain from filing temperature complaints so that we can respond quickly to urgent issues such as disruptive passengers and other incidents on trains.”

The annual number of temperature complaints has grown steadily, reaching 925,000 last year, compared to 875,000 in 2023 and 560,000 in 2022.

Over the past five years, the busiest Line No. 2 accounted for 39.9 percent of such complaints, followed by Line No. 7 with 19 percent, Line No. 3 with 12.7 percent and Line No. 5 with 10.8 percent.

To reduce the number of complaints, Seoul Metro has put stickers in cars on Lines No. 2 and No. 8 reading “Cabin temperature is automatically maintained.”

It has also produced videos for station displays explaining that trains must follow the Ministry of Environment's temperature standards and that apparent temperatures vary depending on congestion and other factors.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom staff. BY HYEON YE-SEUL [paik.jihwan@joongang.co.kr]