[Courtesy of Busan Transportation Corporation]
Special subway carriages exclusively for women will appear this week in South Korea's southern port city of Busan for a three-month test run to prevent sexual harassment and other crimes against women.
The pilot project, however, requires public support as similar ideas proposed by other cities have been scrapped due to a debate over discrimination. Some male passengers had ignored rules and critics said women-exclusive cars may treat all male passengers as dangerous or potential criminals.
For the test run during morning and evening rush hours from June 22, Busan Transportation Corporation (BTC) said it would designate the fifth car of each train as women-only.
"Women-only cars are aimed at protecting socially vulnerable people like pregnant women during rush hour," BTC head Park Jong-hum said in a statement, adding actual operations depend on the opinion of commuters.
Some subway lines in Busan, the country's second- largest city, are overcrowded, with women exposed to the danger of attacks and harassment by men, BTC officials said, citing data on subway crimes targeting women. The Seoul subway system reported some 1,800 cases of sexual harassment last year.
Women-only passenger cars are available in some countries like Israel, Japan, India, Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates. But Indonesia, Taiwan and some European countries followed suit but cancelled women-only services later.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
