At least 200 people were injured after two subway trains collided at a station in South Korea's capital Seoul on Friday, Reuters reported.
Though there were no fatalities, the collision is the second major disaster involving public transportation to hit the country in less than three weeks. A ferry that capsized and sank off the southern coast on April 16 killed 226 of the 476 passengers onboard, most of them high school students. Some 76 are still missing but are feared to have drowned.
Friday's accident occurred when a train crashed into a train that was at the Sangwangsimni station in eastern Seoul.
"An incoming train crashed into one that was stopped at the station," Kim Kyung-su, an official for the fire department, said according to Reuters. Nearly 1,000 people were evacuated.
The afternoon accident was caused by a signal failure, officials said. Two subway cars were also derailed, Seoul Metro official Chung Soo-young said, Reuters reported.
After the accident train passengers ignored orders to remain where they were, prying open train doors and leaping onto the tracks, witnesses told Reuters.
Most of the injuries consisted of minor abrasions, medical officials said. One person received medical treatment for a brain hemorrhage. Another person was treated for a fracture.
"I fell forwards maybe two or three meters," Lee Dong-hyeon, a 26-year-old office worker who was on the train that crashed into the stopped train, told Reuters.
"It was like tripping over when running really fast."
Before Friday's accident, the last major one to occur at a South Korean train station was in 2003 when a subway fire in Daegu city killed 192 people.
Investigators say the ferry Sewol sank because it was carrying cargo that was three times the ferry's limit.
The passengers on the Sewol, full of high school students on a trip to the island resort Jeju, were reportedly told to stay on board as it sank.
