 | |
A family waves as they leave Seoul Station Friday on the Korea Train Express (KTX) heading to their hometown to celebrate Chuseok. This year's Chuseok is the first national holiday after the introduction of the KTX.
|
 |
|
One day ahead of the Chuseok holiday, the "Hangawi (another name for Chuseok) Migration of the Korean People" began Friday, with people from all over the country heading to their hometowns. With this year's Chuseok holiday falling on a Monday, giving travelers the entire weekend to reach their destinations, the traffic was more evenly distributed, and the nation's highways much less congested.
Traffic was smooth on all the nation's major highways. The Korea Highway Corporation (KHC) said, "As of 4:00 p.m. Friday, 180,000 vehicles had left the Seoul metropolitan area. It appears that starting from 5:00, the number of cars will increase, with perhaps 310,00 cars on the roads heading to their hometowns." As of 4:00 p.m. Friday, it took 1 hour 30 minutes to get from Seoul to Daejeon, 5 hours to go from Seoul to Busan, 2 hours 30 minutes from Seoul to Gwangju, 3:30 minutes from Seoul to Mokpo, and 2 hours 50 minutes from Seoul to Gangneung. The KHC said, however, that on Monday (when people will be heading to their hometowns) and Wednesday (when people return to the cities), extremely congested traffic was expected. In particular, it pointed out that since there was only one rest day left following Chuseok, heavy traffic was expected on the roads back to Seoul and other major cities.
The nation's major bus terminals, train stations, ports and airports started to grow crowded from Friday afternoon. As most of the tickets had already been sold out, those looking to purchase tickets had to wait two or three hours. Gangnam Express Bus Terminal, which had looked rather peaceful in the morning, grew hectic in the afternoon as travelers who had bought tickets and those looking to purchase tickets converged on the place. A bus terminal official said, "Holiday travelers are flooding as work places let out. It appears that a total of 32,800 people will use the terminal by daybreak Saturday. Another terminal official said, "We ran 1,561 departures on Friday, 20 percent more than usual. We are marshalling more cars for some of the more popular routes."
Seoul Station, experiencing its first major holiday since the start of KTX bullet train service, was also crowded, but with customers able to pre-purchase tickets through the Internet, tickets for the KTX, Saemaeul and Mugunghwa trains were all sold out. A Seoul Station official said only standing room tickets were left for trains on all routes. He added that between 57,000 and 60,000 people were expected to use the station Friday.
At Incheon's Coastal Ferry Terminal, 14 ferries took their passengers where they needed to go, including 96 passengers who left aboard a 7:10 boat to Baeknyeong Island, South Korea's northernmost island in the West Sea.
At Jeju Airport as well, travelers returning home with gifts in hand have frequently been seen since the first flight arrived Friday morning. The Jejudo Tourism Association estimated that a total of 5,000 people returning home for the holidays and 11,000 tourists would come to Jeju Island on Friday.
(Kim Bong-gi, knight@chosun.com )
|
