South Korea to overhaul train maintenance as aging fleet and extreme heat fuel disruptions

The government has moved to strengthen railway maintenance as a growing number of trains over 20 years old, combined with extreme weather including record heat waves, have led to a rise in derailments, fires and other service disruptions.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced Monday it will implement a comprehensive "full-lifecycle rail vehicle maintenance reinforcement plan" to proactively prevent train breakdowns, accidents and service failures.

The ministry said train breakdowns have been increasing this year compared with the same period last year, raising concerns about safety risks and passenger inconvenience. Service disruptions caused by train failures stood at 185 cases in 2019 before falling to 74 last year. However, the first half of this year already recorded 40 cases, up from 31 in the same period last year.

The ministry also cited the growing number of trains that have been in service for more than 20 years, a higher train utilization rate compared with other countries, and added operational strain from climate change — including extreme heat waves and cold snaps.

In response, the ministry worked with Korea Railroad Corporation (Korail), the Korea Transportation Safety Authority and other relevant agencies to conduct a comprehensive analysis of changing operating conditions and problems on the maintenance floor. The resulting plan strengthens a full-lifecycle maintenance response system covering preventive maintenance, on-site response, root-cause analysis and improvements to maintenance standards, while also modernizing maintenance infrastructure, organization and staffing.

Under the plan, aging components at high risk of failure will be proactively replaced in full, and any component that fails twice or more in a single year will be designated a high-frequency failure part subject to special management. Thirty categories of aging electrical components on high-speed trains will be replaced by 2030 at a total cost of 200 billion won ($136 million).

To improve maintenance quality, the ministry will revise how on-site work orders are written and recorded to prevent gaps in manual compliance, and will hold a "maintenance manual competition" for field workers. For outsourced repairs and maintenance — where quality control can be harder to ensure — the plan calls for stronger pre-verification measures, including on-site inspections when selecting contractors and physical testing of parts upon delivery.

The ministry also plans to shift to condition-based maintenance, a system that monitors component status in real time and schedules tailored servicing at the optimal moment. Starting with new rolling stock such as the KTX-Eum and KTX-Cheongnyong, sensors installed on key systems — including traction and power signals — will monitor vehicle conditions in real time. AI-driven analysis of the collected big data will then predict failures in advance and optimize parts-replacement schedules.

In addition, the cab data transmission system will be upgraded to enable earlier detection of anomalies during operation, and heat-detection systems for running gear will be expanded to major stations including Daejeon, Dong-Daegu and Iksan.

To ensure a replacement train can be deployed anywhere in the country within 30 minutes during an emergency, standby trains will be permanently stationed at key hub stations including Seoul Station, Suseo Station, Busan Station, Gwangju Songjeong Station, Osong Station and Gyeongju Station.

The ministry said it will incorporate the action items from the plan into the national railway safety implementation plan to ensure each responsible agency carries them out without delay, and will operate an inter-agency consultative body to monitor progress and support swift execution.

Kim Tae-byeong, director general of the ministry's railway bureau, said fundamentally overhauling the maintenance system to proactively address changes in the train operating environment — including aging fleets, climate change and AI technology — is of paramount importance. "We will establish a prevention-centered maintenance system and innovate our on-site response capabilities and maintenance infrastructure to build a safer and more trusted railway environment," he said.