South Korea is weighing longer rest periods for railway controllers after a viral post about overwork raised safety concerns, the Transport Ministry said.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said it is in talks with budget officials on expanding rest intervals, while stressing that the risk of a major incident remains low. No serious accidents linked to its control system have occurred in more than two decades, according to the ministry.
The response came Saturday after a controller at state-run Korail described harsh working conditions in a post on Blind, a workplace-based online community.
In the post, the controller called for a shift from the current three-team, two-shift system to a four-team, two-shift system, arguing that the tight schedule had led to chronic sleep disorders.
“With a single click, I could put hundreds of lives at risk. This job requires extreme concentration, but when monitoring screens at 3 or 4 a.m., I sometimes feel like I am seeing things,” the controller wrote.
“If the Transport Ministry and budget authorities fail to fully implement a four-team, two-shift system, a disaster involving hundreds of passengers could occur on KTX high-speed trains in the foreseeable future,” the post added.
According to the ministry, adopting a four-team, two-shift system would reduce the average workload to 182.5 working days per year and 37.1 hours per week, about 30 days and 2.3 hours less than under the current system.
The transition has long been a source of conflict between Korail and its employees since the late 2010s, as it would require additional hiring.
Staffing shortages tied to the push for a four-team system have also been cited in past safety concerns.
In a 2022 incident that resulted in the death of a railway worker at Obong Station in Uiwang, Gyeonggi Province, then-Transport Minister Won Hee-ryong attributed lax safety monitoring to reduced staffing levels, saying the four-team system had been implemented without government approval, leading to insufficient staffing.
Since then, the ministry has gradually accepted the four-team system across most sectors, including administration, infrastructure, rolling stock and electrical systems. Still, staffing levels have not yet sufficiently expanded.
Korail's 374 railway controllers, however, effectively remain excluded from this transition amid concerns that any staffing shortfall could pose serious safety risks. The ministry said it is working on a gradual transition in the control sector and estimates that an additional 125 personnel would be required to implement the four-team system.
It also emphasized that current risks remain low despite worker fatigue, as train control is largely automated. The system sets safe routes automatically and manual intervention is only required for disruptions or emergencies. At least two controllers monitor operations at all times.
“Since 2006, when the railway traffic control center was established, there have been no crashes or derailments caused by controller error,” the ministry said. “We will also introduce artificial intelligence-based (surveillance) to support field control, along with additional safety technologies.”
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