Fabric chairs on Seoul subway trains will be replaced with reinforced plastic chairs to keep them clean from bedbugs. Seoul Metro said on April 2 that it will replace about 2,000 fabric chairs on its subways with reinforced plastic chairs by 2029.

Since the spread of bedbugs from Europe last year, concerns have grown in Korea that there are many environments in which bedbugs are easy to live, especially in public places and multi-use facilities. Bedbugs, which hate light and like humid environments, can attach themselves to people's clothes and move to fabric chairs of subway trains.

Seoul Metro said it received a total of 66 complaints about bedbugs from October last year to March this year, but no actual bedbugs were found upon inspection. "The chances are low for trains to become a habitat for bedbugs, but there is a possibility that they could be introduced by passengers, so we will make our utmost efforts to control them," it said.

The fabric chairs are installed on 1,955 cars of 234 trains operating some sections of subway lines No.1 to No. 8 and No. 9, accounting for 54 percent of the total.

Seoul Metro plans to replace the seats in stages from this year to 2029. Subway chairs are usually replaced every 15 years, but the company has decided to replace the fabric chairs with reinforced plastic ones even if they have been used only for two to three years.

Seoul Metro also plans to hot-steam the current fabric chairs once a month at 100 degrees Celsius until they are replaced, and to check whether bedbugs live underneath or in gaps between seats by hiring a professional disinfection company.

Ahn Chang-gyu, an official from Seoul Metro, said, "Please participate in the prevention of bedbugs by refraining from taking subway trains with food to keep them clean.”