President Park Geun-hye of Korea along with 1,200 invited guests and members of the public attended a ceremony at Songjeong Station in Gwangju on April 1 to mark the opening of the new 182.3km high-speed line from Osong to Gwangju. The new KTX Honam services from Seoul to Mokpo will begin using the line on April 1.
Osong is located on the existing Seoul-Busan high-speed line and the new line will reduce journey times between Seoul and Gwangju by 1 hour 6 minutes from 2 hour 39 minutes on existing infrastructure. The new line is part of the Korean government's agenda to connect all of its major cities within two hours travel of one another.
Work on the project, which was budgeted at 10.24 trillion won ($9.28 billion), began in 2009 and was entirely funded by the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure.
The new KTX Honam line includes new stations at Namgongju, Iksan, Jeongeup, Gwangju-Songjeong, while services will continue to Mokpo on existing infrastructure.
Park said the new line will provide a major economic boost to Jeolla Province and the southwest of Korea.
"The KTX Honam Line will bring an economic ripple effect worth 25 trillion won to the region and promote human resources exchange and business relocation to greatly outline balanced national development," Park says.
Services on the new line will utilize 22 Honam KTX trains supplied by Hyundai Rotem under a contract signed in 2011. The new trains have 410 seats compared with 363 on the KTX Sancheon, Hyundai Rotem's previous high-speed train platform.
Park said she hopes the KTX Honam project will provide a springboard for Korean companies to sell their equipment abroad.
"It is time to make inroads in the global railway market worth 200 trillion won," she said.
Developed by KR over the past five years, the new line diverges from the existing Seou-Busan high speed line at Osong, where the station opened in 2010 has been expanded, and serves new stations at Gongju, Iksan, Jeongeup and Gwangju Songjeong. The total construction cost is put at around 8,350 billion won, which was funded by the national government.
Korail is due to start KTX services over the new line on April 2, cutting the fastest journey times between Seoul and Gwangju from 2 hours 40 minutes to just 90 minutes. Tickets for the new services have been on sale since March 13.
The Honam HSR is intended to bring the province of Jeollanam-do into what the government calls the “half-day life zone,“ where return business trip between Gwangju and Seoul can be achieved in half a day, and daily commuting to the capital becomes possible. According to the Korea Transport Institute, the average commuting time in the Seoul metropolitan area is now 76 minutes, following the development of satellite cities like Gwacheon, Anyang, Gwangmyeong and Goyang. KR suggests that this makes the 93 minute trip competitive for daily commuting.
The line is projected to generate economic benefits totalling 25.2 trillion won, of which 21 trillion won comes from increased production and 4.2 trillion won in wages, through the generation of 172,000 new jobs. The Chungcheongnam-do region around Osong and the Innovation Cities and Enterprise Cities initiatives in the Honam region are expected to stimulate local development and enhance the urban infrastructure, with new logistics hubs springing up around the KTX stations, according to KR.
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