Outdoor Elevator attracting more visitors to Namsan

By Chin Yu-sun
Korea Times intern

For the last one year, the outdoor elevator on the 70-meter slanting track carried a daily average of 1,860 visitors or 680,000 in total from the entrance of Namsan Tunnel No. 3 to the cable car stop on Mt. Namsan, Seoul City said Wednesday.

A spokesman said that there are far more daily elevator users than the 200-300 visitors who previously had to walk up steep cement steps to the cable car station.

In particular, as many as 5,400 visitors rode the Namsan Oreumi on May 5, Children’s Day, verifying that it has become another useful facility at the northern edge for visitors to access the 262-meter-high mountain, he added.

To link the two destinations for those coming up from the two nearby subway stations of Myeongdong and Hyohyeon on Line 4, the elevator was installed on June 30, 2009.

The elevator can carry up to 20 people free of charge in less than two minutes from 9 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. every day, in conjunction with the operating hours of the cable car from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Passengers can also command a wide view of downtown Seoul in the glass-walled vehicle, which is cooled or heated, depending on the season. The vehicle can be boarded within about a 10 minutes’ walk from the two subway stations.

“The physically challenged and the elderly can tour the mountain more easily thanks to the elevator,” a city official said. “We will continue our efforts to make the scenic mountain more accessible.”

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