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The Yomiuri Shimbun The Queen Beetle is seen in Hakata Ward, Fukuoka, on Monday.
The Yomiuri Shimbun
18:14 JST, December 24, 2024
Kyushu Railway Co. (JR Kyushu) announced Monday that a hydrofoil service between Hakata Port in Fukuoka Prefecture and South Korea’s Busan by its subsidiary, JR Kyushu Jet Ferry Inc., will be discontinued due to the concealment of water leakage.
The parent company decided to withdraw from the passenger ferry business that uses the Queen Beetle ship, with operations being suspended due to the problem. JR Kyushu Jet Ferry had continued the ferry service for more than three months even while concealing the trouble of seawater leaking into the ship’s hull.
JR Kyushu decided to discontinue the ferry service that started in 1991 and disband the subsidiary.
The company made the decision at a meeting of its board of directors held Monday.
President Yoji Furumiya said at a press conference in Fukuoka that the decision was made because reinforcement of the ship’s body, parts of which were repeatedly flooded with seawater, is difficult and thus continuing the ferry service would be hard to do.
“We cannot guarantee safe sailing” of the vessel, he said.
The Japan Coast Guard is continuing an investigation Jet Ferry will be after all the responses to the probe have been completed.
JR Kyushu will move 70 employees of the ferry subsidiary to its group companies. If they want to find jobs outside of the group, the firm will consider offering assistance.
The company is also considering what to do with the ship, including transferring it to another company or decommissioning it.
Even after withdrawing from the ferry business on the Japan-South Korea route, Furumiya said, “It will not cause a large negative impact” on the JR Kyushu group’s business management.
The Queen Beetle started service on the Japan-South Korea route in November 2022. Water leakage into the ship’s body was first discovered in February 2023, but JR Kyushu Jet Ferry had continued operations for several days without reporting the problem to the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry. The company received an administrative penalty from the ministry over the matter.
When water leaks occurred again between February and May this year, its crew members wrote a false record in the journey logbook saying there were no abnormalities.
The act of concealing the situation was unveiled during the ministry’s inspection, and the ministry judged that the crew had intentionally covered up the problem.
Service of the Queen Beetle has been suspended since August. In September, the ministry issued the nation’s first order to dismiss a ship’s chief safety administrator and operational supervisor.
In the wake of the spate of problems, JR Kyushu fired three subsidiary officials, including the person who was president when they occurred.
End of 33 year-long service
The Yomiuri Shimbun JR Kyushu President Yoji Furumiya announces the discontinuation of the Queen Beetle ferry service at a press conference in Hakata Ward, Fukuoka, on Monday.
JR Kyushu group’s Japan-South Korea ferry service started in 1991, about four years after the privatization of the Japanese National Railways.
A hydrofoil — known as a “jetfoil” in Japan — lifts a ship’s hull over the water surface and sails at high speeds. One was introduced on the route.
Because the first ship’s shape was similar to a beetle, it was named the Beetle. The Beetle connected Hakata Port in Fukuoka Prefecture and Busan in South Korea in about three hours.
Initially, the number of passengers using the ferry was stagnant. However, the figure began increasing in the wake of occasions such as the 2002 Soccer World Cup that was cohosted by Japan and South Korea and a boom in Japan of South Korean pop culture and other things in 2003 in the wake of the airing of South Korean TV dramas.
The number of passengers peaked at 350,000 in fiscal 2004. Since then, the Beetle’s route was dubbed a “golden sea route.”
In 2005, the passenger ferry business was spun off as JR Kyushu Jet Ferry. Yasuharu Maruyama, 76, the first president of the company, said confidently, “The ferry changed South Korea, which was physically close but far psychologically for Japanese, to a country that is close both physically and psychologically.”
However, since the start of the 2010s, low-cost carrier airlines increased their presence, and the number of passengers using the ferry route declined. In fiscal 2014, the number halved from its peak to about 170,000.
Amid the situation, the ferry company introduced the Queen Beetle at a cost of about ¥5.7 billion.
Its passenger capacity was 502, double that of the Beetle. The company advertised that passengers on the new vessel could enjoy cruising without having to wear seat belts during the voyage.
While the Queen Beetle was still being built, the COVID-19 pandemic directly hit the business. Although the ferry service had continued to be suspended for a long time, the new ship finally debuted on the Japan-South Korea sea route in November 2022.
As the pandemic eased, passenger numbers were expected to increase.
“The sea route has contributed to friendship exchanges between Japan and South Korea,” said Yoshitaka Ishii, 92, the first president of JR Kyushu, who made his utmost efforts to open the Japan-South Korea sea route. “Although a certain degree of demand was expected from now on, it is extremely regrettable that the service has been discontinued because of such problems.”
