One thing I never appreciated but started to since I lived in New York was the subway in Seoul. Whenever I visited Seoul from New York, I was always impressed with its clean and nice facility.
Seoul is a gigantic metropolis (the second largest in the world according to wikipedia), and now it’s looking at 10 subway lines. I used to commute to school on green line which is a circle one, and from home to school it was almost exact opposite point of each other and it took me about an hour each way. 
A few facts I found between New York vs. Seoul subways:
1. Since few years ago, Seoul started building the glass walls at every station claiming it prevents suicidal or accidental falls.
Even before the walls, there were arrow marks on the floor indicating where the doors will be. Not sure how much effective it has been in stopping people to jump off to rails, but at least it probably would stop people from throwing garbage (if it was in NYC). Stations are nicely cooled with A/C, it was almost shocking when I first experienced how hot and chocking it was at subway stops in NYC.
2. There are reserved seats for the elderly just like in New York, but people’s respect for those seats are very strict. If you are not over 40ish, you don’t want to bother looking at the empty yellow seats. I’ve witnessed some old man yelling at a boy who was resting at the ‘unqualified seat’ scolding how rude he was. It is very unproductive to leave the seats empty while there are no old people to fill in with, but people take it as a gesture to show their (enforced) respect for the elderly.
As far as I noticed in NY, people was most of the time reasonable in yielding their seats to the elderly or pregnant women. The ‘respect’ is rooted very deeply in the culture starting way back (like over 1000years?) from Confucianism, which has been updated and watered down over time, but there are still plenty things remained such as this one.
3. A couple of more shots of my home station showing rails and elevator for the handicaps. Hardly notice anyone using it however.. nice to have in case I guess.
4. Most people use RFID cards, usually a general feature of credit cards here or SIM cards in cell-phones.
5. We do get reception on cellphones in subway cars in Seoul. I’ve seen a poll in NYC when the city once considered getting the antenna in the cars, but people were concerned if it would get loud and obnoxious with people talking on the phones. I have to say although, it was true even several years ago, but I feel like the morale has been established, and now it’s hard to find people talking loud in the car. People rather do texting (a lot) or watch TV (through earphones) on their satellite DMB phones.
6. One thing I wish we had here is express lines. It would have made my life so much easier when I had to ride subway for like 2 hours last week to visit another side of Seoul.
Filed under: Versus , comparison, culture, seoul, subway, transportation
