Gyeonggi Province sees 29 cases of subsidence in 2024

The number of subsidence cases in Gyeonggi Province rose slightly in 2024, with 29 reported incidents, according to data released by the province Wednesday.

While the number marked a slight uptick from the previous year, the overall trend has been downward, dropping from 79 cases in 2018 to 26 in 2023.

The most recent case occurred last Friday in Gwangmyeong, just south of Seoul, when the pavement above an underground subway construction site collapsed, leaving one person injured and another missing. It occurred at the site for a section of the Sinansan Line, set to added to the greater Seoul's subway systems in 2026.

Of the 305 incidents between 2019 and 2024, 42.6 percent were caused by erosion around pipes, 22.3 percent by problems with the backfilling process — in which excavated areas are filled in again after construction work — 14.8 percent by excavation work, and 4.3 percent were attributed to other process related to construction.

Nearly half (47.2 percent) of the ground settlement took place in the rainy seasons from June to August,

Koreans have expressed concern over recent string of subsidence cases, particularly in the greater Seoul area subject to large-scale underground constructions and pipe installations. Some 16.6 percent of water pipes and 19.7 percent of sewer pipes were installed in Gyeonggi Province as of 2023, according to the data from the Ministry of Environment.

Many cities in the Gyeonggi Province function effectively as bed towns for Seoul, the nation's capital and most populous city. As such, construction of the additional subway lines running across Seoul and Gyeonggi Province are planned or underway, including the aforementioned Sinansan Line.