Construction of the Korean high speed railway

摘要

Last December the President of Korea, Kim Vae-Jung, inaugurated the test section of the Seoul-Pusan High Speed Rail Project, symbolic of the economic recovery of the country, which had been strongly hit by the 1997 financial crisis. This inauguration celebrated the remarkable progress of project construction and moved the project into a new phase consisting of highspeed testing of the TGV trainsets. The new line is expected to be completed in four years and the revenue service phase is scheduled to start in April 2004. This article outlines the context and history of the project and gives an update of the construction status of what is today the largest transportation infrastructure project in the world.