Anyone who has ridden the Seoul subway has probably seen it: a pink-tinted “pregnancy consideration seat” (임산부 배려석), clearly designated but often occupied by someone who isn’t pregnant, while an expectant mother stands nearby, sometimes hesitant to even ask for the seat back.
Seoul Metro announced on June 26, 2026 that it would begin a pilot program addressing exactly this friction, according to a report by Erounnet. Starting that day, the operator began attaching new signage directly above the backrest of pregnancy seats on all 39 train sets — 312 cars in total — running on Line 6.
The seats themselves have existed since 2013, with two designated per car, distinguished by seat color and a backrest emblem. But Seoul Metro said an analysis of citizen complaints filed over the past three years found 22 specific requests to make the seats more visible, with riders complaining that the existing markers were hard to notice once someone was already sitting in a crowded car. The new overhead stickers are designed to remain visible regardless of whether the seat is occupied, letting riders identify a pregnancy seat “from anywhere in the car.”
The scale of the underlying complaint volume is notable: Seoul Metro’s customer center received a total of 16,725 complaints related to pregnancy seats, averaging 6,921 per year and 19 per day — the vast majority requesting that an announcement be made asking a non-pregnant rider to give up the seat. Complaints climbed from 6,286 in 2024 to 7,585 in 2025, with 2,854 already logged by May 2026.
Because Korea has no legal mechanism to compel any specific rider to vacate a priority seat, Seoul Metro said its main tools remain softer ones: in-car promotional videos, announcements, and joint public campaigns encouraging voluntary courtesy — including one held on April 28 at Yeouido Station. The operator said it would review results from the Line 6 pilot, along with rider feedback, before deciding whether to expand the sticker program to other lines.
For many pregnant riders, the awkwardness cuts both ways. Some have said they avoid wearing the official pregnancy badge altogether because they feel it puts unwanted social pressure on other passengers to stand up — meaning the seat sits empty even as the same rider stands in a crowded car nearby.
Source: Cho Eun-gyeol, Erounnet (이로운넷), June 26, 2026.
