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The inside of the charging station

Phone booths are seldom used anymore, but they remain a major headache because of maintenance costs. Now, however, some are finding a new purpose as charging stations for electric vehicles.

Working with Seoul Metropolitan Government and automobile sharing service We Share Car, KT Linkus announced that it had set up charging stations for electric cars at three phone booths in central Seoul. Trial service at the stations began on Tuesday, the company said.

KT Linkus, is a subsidiary of KT, the company in charge of phone booth maintenance.

The three phone booths at which electric vehicle (EV) charging stations have been installed are located at the Hyundai Apartment complex in the Dangsan neighborhood of Yeongdeunpo District, the bus garage in the Myeonmok neighborhood of Jungrang District, and the post office at Ssangmun No. 2 neighborhood in Dobong District.

The charging stations will be made available to users of We Share Car. They are capable of fully charging a battery in about six hours.

After the trial period is over, KT Linkus is planning to gradually increase the number of EV charging stations.

In Europe, where electric vehicles are more popular than in South Korea, many public phone booths have already been converted into charging stations, a representative for KT Linkus explained, with 1,000 such stations in Austria and 500 in Spain.

“We came up with the idea of converting these phone booths - which are already located all over the place - into electric vehicle charging points to promote the use of electric cars in Korea and to provide more convenient service to drivers of such cars,” said Lee Jeong-seok, head of business operations for KT Linkus.

By Yoo Shin-jae, staff reporter

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