Seoul’s Hangang Bus service fails again, exposing safety failures, ignored warnings
River cities like to say that water reveals more than it hides. Seoul’s latest commuter experiment has learned this in the most public way.
A vessel on the Hangang Bus service, promoted as a sleek escape from congested roads, hit a sand bar near Jamsil on Saturday, leaving 82 passengers stranded for nearly an hour. It was the second suspension of the service in as many months, a reminder that civic ambition without preparation quickly runs aground.
Introduced in September as one of Mayor Oh Se-hoon's signature initiatives, the Hangang Bus promised a blend of modern mobility and scenic appeal. Instead, it has become a case study in how haste erodes confidence.
Mechanical failures during trial runs forced a monthlong pause, yet the city pressed ahead with a relaunch on Nov. 2, assuring the public that safety issues had been resolved. Thirteen days later, the boat became stranded in shallow waters after half the navigation lights failed and the captain drifted off course.
The episode was avoidable. Between early August and mid-November, operators filed 15 reports of vessels scraping the riverbed or glancing off submerged objects. Low water was expected during the dry season that comes after the summer, and the National Assembly’s audit had warned of the danger.
What emerges is not misfortune but a flawed system that treats foreseeable risk as an acceptable nuisance. The Jamsil stretch is a narrow corridor constrained by a buried gas pipeline and the concrete structures that flank it. This time, the vessel struck a sand and gravel patch exposed by the seasonal ebb rather than the pipeline itself, but the lessson is the same: The margin for error is slim.
Two of four solar-powered navigation lights were out because of weak batteries, leaving the captain reliant on partial signals while entering a channel where precision matters. Planning appears to have downplayed hazards and overstated the readiness of the equipment.
Political urgency has compounded the problem. The rapid restart after the first suspension suggested pressure to deliver rather than to ensure reliability. Mayor Oh apologized Sunday but urged critics not to politicize the incident, a plea that sidesteps the central issue. Public concern arises not from partisanship but from a transport link that has yet to demonstrate basic reliability.
The administration’s choice to suspend only the upstream section of the route is similarly inadequate. A partial halt implies that the problem is confined to a handful of docks when incident reports point to risks along multiple stretches of the river.
Prime Minister Kim Min-seok has rightly called for a joint inquiry with the Interior Ministry. The entire service should remain suspended until officials can prove that every route meets consistent safety standards and that oversight is more than a formality.
Achieving that requires more than fresh paint on buoys or new batteries in signal lights. Seoul needs an independent review of depths, currents and underwater structures across the full network. The river buses need sturdier, non-solar-dependent equipment for winter, along with clear evacuation protocols that allow crews to move passengers swiftly rather than having to improvise.
Most of all, the city must determine whether steady commuter services are feasible during low-water periods and whether seasonal adjustments must be written into the schedule.
Urban transport succeeds on predictability, safety and reliability. When any one of those pillars weakens, the rest cannot carry the load. The Hangang Bus was meant to signal a city eager for innovation. Instead, it offers a starker lesson: Credibility in public policy rests not on how quickly a ribbon is cut but on whether the underlying system works when no one is watching.
Seoul should pause the service in full and confront the question it has tried to outrun: Why did speed matter more than safety?
khnews@heraldcorp.com
