A train on the Busan metro came to a halt for two minutes and 20 seconds after a passenger pressed the emergency button. The passenger was a woman in her seventies; there were no injuries and no incident.

What the emergency button does

Emergency intercom and stop devices in metro carriages let passengers speak directly with crew and, depending on the system, bring a train to a stop. They are designed for moments requiring immediate intervention — fire, a passenger falling, violence on board.

Stopping while in motion can itself create risk. A train halted inside a tunnel is difficult to evacuate, and the spacing of following services is disrupted in sequence. For that reason many metro systems use a structure of intercom first, with stopping left to crew judgement.

Repetition dulls the response

What operators worry about is not device malfunction but accumulated misuse. When calls that are not genuine emergencies recur, response times slow and passengers stop trusting the alarm.

At the same time, passengers often cannot judge accurately whether a situation is an emergency. For elderly passengers and those who need foreign-language guidance, the clarity of the wording matters. Busan has a high share of tourists and foreign residents, which makes the accuracy of multilingual signage a practical safety factor.

Busan Transportation Corporation said it is establishing the circumstances of the incident.