Gwangju's Kumho Family Land is on vacation

Kumho Family Land (금호패밀리랜드), a small theme park in Gwangju's Buk-gu, will be closed through February 5th because of safety inspections. This comes after two children were injured on a ride on January 27th.

I haven't seen anything in the English-language press about the accident, and don't know too many details as my Korean isn't good enough. Others may be able to glean some information from articles like this or this.

YTN says the ride in question is "날으는썰매," a ride that spins clockwise on a slightly undulating track at varying speeds. Kumho Family Land's official site has a small profile of the ride here, including a short video clip and three grainy photos.

Sad news, and I hope the injuries weren't too serious. I'm inclined to think they weren't, if the story never appeared in the English-language press. I really have no idea how many foreigners in the area know about the park, or how many foreign parents would consider taking their kid there. Minor injuries or not, the accident is something parents would want to know about. Not that there is something inherently dangerous about the park---it looks kind of cute, actually---or that parents necessarily have less-dangerous options available to them. 2006 and 2007 saw accidents and fatalities at Lotte World and Everland. There was also a tragic accident in Busan last year, when five family members died on a Ferris Wheel at a travelling carnival.

It's also worth pointing out that keeping track of these accidents takes some work, meaning that the casual visitor unfortunately may not have any idea about a park's recent history. The Korea Herald, for example, no longer allows links to its articles, and all old links to the site are broken. The Korea Times' links expire very quickly, of course, and sometime last year it changed its domain name from times.hankooki.com to koreatimes.co.kr, and articles from before the switch are gone. The article about the woman's death at Everland last year, for instance, is no longer available on the KT site. The only place to get it is via Empas dictionary's entry for "roller." I found that article by googling the original KT title, but interestingly the "roller" refers not to the Everland accident but to the above-mentioned death on a roller coaster at Lotte World.