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People walk up stairs after getting off a KTX bullet train at Seoul Station in central Seoul on Friday. (Yonhap) |
The number of passengers on South Korea's bullet trains KTX and SRT hit a record high for the first quarter of a year, the trains' operators said Sunday.
From January to March, the number of KTX users jumped to 19.26 million from 17.91 million during the same period of last year, according to Korea Railroad.
SR Inc. said the number of SRT users rose to 6.43 million from 6.3 million during the same period.
The operators said the "pent-up" travel demand after years of the COVID-19 pandemic and an increased supply of their bullet train routes pushed up the quarterly figures.
Among the routes, KTX's Seoul-Busan route and SRT's Suseo-Busan route attracted 1.49 million and 678,000 users, respectively, in the March quarter.
Korail and SR started the KTX and SRT bullet train services in April 2004 and December 2016, respectively. (Yonhap)
