The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs hosted the 21st Road Day ceremony on July 6 at Seoul Cultural Hall with some 1,000 related government officials led by Minister Kwon Do-youn and construction industry leaders including President Chang Seok-hyo of Korea Expressway Corp. in attendance.

The event was inaugurated on July 7, 1992 to celebrate the anniversary of the opening of the Seoul-Busan Expressway on July 7, 1970, during which citations were presented to 56 people in the construction industry who made contributions to the construction of highways in the country and mulled over ways to draw up the appropriate policies for the management and construction of more highways.

Minister Kwon, in his commemorative speech, said Korea’ s total highways stretched for more than 4,000 km as of April this year. “We now have to take care of 105,000 km of highways and roads in the country, making Korea competitive with advanced nations in terms of growth and technology for the construction and maintenance of highways and roads.

“We ought to remember the passion and challenging spirits that went into overcoming the difficulties of the construction of the Seoul-Busan Expressway some 42 years ago and look toward the overseas highway construction market, backed up by the accumulated know-how for building highways,” the minister said in his speech.

Kwon said we live in an age where IT technologies are highly developed and where the quality of life and environment have become key elements in the lives of all people. Thus, safety has also become very important in the construction of roads and highways, especially in this era increased life expectancy, which requires tailor-made highway and road designs. The government is now engaged in the development and commercialization of smart high-tech construction technologies, which they expect to be ready by 2015.

Among the citation and medal winners were Executive Vice President Oh Doo-hwan of the Civil Engineering Headquarters of GS Construction who won the Industrial Merit Silver Medal, Executive Vice President Kim Seung-soo of Samsung C&T who won the Industrial Merit Bronze Medal, and Shim Chan-sub of the Korea Expressway Corp.

Korea Expressway Corp. was established on Feb. 15, 1969 to construct and manage expressways throughout the nation.

“We began building expressways at the end of the 1960s, when the nation’ s economic conditions were so unfavorable that its per capita income was less than US$200. These expressways, which we were only able to build after overcoming many serious adversities, became the basis for Korea’ s dramatic economic growth, which has been called ‘the Miracle of the Han River,’ ” President Chang Seok-hyo said.

“Koreans can boast of having one of the world’ s top 10 economies because of the successful completion of such monumental public works as the Gyeongbu (Seoul-Busan) expressway. It is not too much to say that these landmark events have been the primary impetus for the entire Korean economy up to today.

“We plan to increase the length of our expressways to 6,160 km by 2020. When this plan becomes a reality, people will be able to reach an expressway anywhere in the country within 30 minutes.

“We are now using IT to develop truly ‘intelligent highways.’  Just around the corner is the development of ‘smart highways’  that will seamlessly integrate people, automobiles, and roads.

“KEC also plans to take advantage of its experience, technological acumen, and capabilities in road construction and management to explore overseas markets,” Chang said.