A KTX high-speed train stopped just 13 minutes after it started on Sunday due to a problem with the motor block, a key component that controls the amount of power equivalent to the hard disk of a computer.
KTX 130 carrying about 500 passengers left Busan at noon on Sunday for Seoul but stopped about 3 km inside the 20.3 km-long Geumjeong Tunnel.
“The KTX train was supposed to run at its normal speed of 300 km/h once it started, but the engineer stopped the train as power output was not enough to reach that speed,” a KORAIL spokesman said. “Twenty minutes after it stopped, the train returned to Busan Station at 12:57 p.m. Passengers were moved to another KTX train which left for Seoul at 1:03 p.m.”
Several recent KTX breakdowns and accidents have been blamed on motor block problems.
On Feb. 27, a train that left Seoul for Busan stopped due to a motor block problem near Singyeongju Station. In October last year, a KTX Sancheon train stopped with a similar problem at the same spot in the Geumjeong Tunnel.
Experts are calling for a wholesale check of the KTX system that was introduced in 2004. Frequent accidents, including a derailment near Gwangmyeong Station in Gyeonggi Province last month, are raising doubts whether KORAIL is maintaining cars properly.
After the derailment last month, the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs reviewed the KTX system from late February until last Friday.
Unlike the Korean-built KTX Sancheon train that derailed near Gwangmyeong Station in February, the KTX train that stopped in Busan Sunday was an ordinary model that has run since the service started in April 2004.
Kim Yeon-kyu, a senior researcher at the Korea Transport Institute, said, “Trains normally need extensive maintenance and check-ups once they are about some 10 years old, and many of the current KTX trains are reaching that age. I doubt whether KORAIL is properly preparing for that.”
