I was running on a high-speed train in France, and the engineer jumped...the tragedy of Christmas Eve

EPA Yonhap News

On the 24th, Christmas Eve, a high-speed rail engineer who was running at full speed in southeastern France jumped and killed himself.

According to the daily Le Parisien and BFM TV on the 25th (local time), the high-speed rail, which departed from Lyon Station in Paris at 7 p.m. the previous evening and headed to Saint-Etienne in the southeast, stopped within an hour of operation. At that time, more than 400 people were on the high-speed rail heading to their hometown for Christmas.

Checkers tried to contact the engineer, but there was no response, and they confirmed that the inside of the cockpit was empty. As a result, the control authorities immediately stopped train operations on both tracks and reported them to the fire authorities.

The engineer was found dead 2km upstream from where the train stopped."The engineer killed himself while the train was running," the French Railways Corporation (SNCF) said in a statement after clearing the accident

. "The entire railway family is in mourning, and we are devastated by the terrible tragedy of Christmas."

The engineer is known to have recently suffered from depression due to his personal history.

The train stopped on its own through an automatic braking system, the Korea Railroad Corporation said. "The safety of train passengers was not threatened at all."

The accident delayed the departure and arrival of 12 high-speed railways, causing more than 3,000 people to suffer damage. The Korea Railroad Corporation said it would compensate up to 100 percent of the ticket price for the hardest-hit train passengers.

Lee Yu-na, reporter for the digital news team

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