Missing Rebar Crisis: Should Seoul’s High-Speed Rail Construction Stop?

The government has launched a large, joint safety inspection after discovering missing rebar in the GTX-A line at Samsung Station, and the dispute between leading Seoul mayoral candidates has intensified in the run-up to the election. The administration says it will focus on verifying safety. Jung Won-oh of the Democratic Party says additional construction should stop until reinforcements are completed, while Oh Se-hoon of the People Power Party accuses Jung of politicizing a project that poses no safety risk and has challenged him to a public debate.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the Ministry of the Interior and Safety announced on the 21st that they had launched a joint government safety inspection of the GTX-A Samsung Station section (about 1 km).

The inspection will be conducted by a 40-member government joint inspection team focused on construction-site safety and construction management. Participating organizations include the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport; the Ministry of the Interior and Safety; the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency; the Korea Infrastructure Safety Management Authority; the Korea Electrical Safety Corporation; the Korea Railroad Research Institute; and Korea National Railway, together with outside experts. The government said it will inspect not only the missing-rebar area at Yeongdong-daero Section 3, basement level 5, but also safety management and the overall construction process across the entire Yeongdong-daero site.

The ministry said it plans to finish construction-site safety checks quickly and to carry out a roughly two-month root-cause analysis of construction and management issues.

At the site, Jung said he was surprised by the number of cracks. “Experts must determine whether these are structural cracks,” he added, “but even a nonexpert would find the situation worrying.” He criticized the progress of work: “Substandard construction was identified and reported. I don’t understand why above-ground work continued before the reinforcement was completed.”

Jung said it was unreasonable to reserve space for reinforcement yet continue work down to the third basement level without finalizing reinforcement plans. “When a problem is found, you should prepare a solution first, complete the reinforcement, and then proceed to the next phase — that is the normal procedure,” he said.

However, Jung rejected calls to halt all GTX construction. “How would we cancel the project?” he said, clarifying that his position is that additional phases should stop in sections that require reinforcement while those reinforcement works are underway. “It is appropriate for the affected phase to remain paused until reinforcement is complete,” he said.

Addressing allegations that Seoul City knew about missing rebar last year but failed to report it to the mayor, Jung said he asked site officials why they did not inform the deputy mayor and city officials during their visit. They told him there is a formal reporting channel, so they could not report directly. Democratic Party lawmaker Chun Jun-ho added that because the matter involved interagency reporting, on-site staff could not intervene, and ultimately it appears Seoul City did not make the report.

In response, Oh Se-hoon sharply criticized Jung in two Facebook posts that day.

Oh called for a single-issue public debate on the GTX-A issue, saying, “As Seoul mayoral candidates, it is our duty to directly debate the construction issues citizens are waiting on.” He demanded a public response from Jung and said, “Let policy debate determine what truly serves the public interest.”

In a separate post, Oh accused Jung of seeking to halt work on the GTX-A Samsung Station and warned that stopping major projects would repeat the “lost decade” Seoul experienced under former Mayor Park Won-soon, effectively bringing the city to a standstill.

Oh said Seoul City, after learning of the missing rebar, conducted scientific and objective technical reviews and concluded that safety reinforcement could proceed in parallel with ongoing construction. He noted that the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport was aware of the issue while GTX-A trial operations went ahead, and that an emergency safety inspection by Korea National Railway found no major safety problems.

He accused Jung of amplifying public anxiety for political gain and said Jung was “relying on rumor, not science.” “We need a Seoul that never stops, not one that stops altogether,” Oh said, emphasizing his development- and supply-focused approach to city governance.

The controversy has expanded beyond a missing-rebar incident into a broader election debate framed around “safety versus development,” a central issue in the Seoul mayoral race. The government’s joint safety inspection and any objective findings on structural safety and construction management are likely to shape the debate’s trajectory. For now, as authorities verify safety, Jung calls for a precautionary halt to work while Oh argues for continuing construction based on expert assessment, putting the two candidates on a collision course.

Jang Hye-won, dalgu@ekn.kr