Korea Expressway Corp. has been doing its best to do its social duty as a responsible corporate citizen in diverse areas. The only highway management company in Korea has been engaged in a wide range of social service activities ranging from blood donation drives, free heart operations for babies with bad hearts, and scholarships to the children whose parents died from highway accidents, to donations to education facilities and donations of lumber pellets, among others, to do its job in full as a corporate citizen.

Aware that blood supply is critical, the company introduced its own blood bank and began seeking blood donations from its employees starting in October 2008. Over the past four years, 11,237 officers and employees of the company participated in the blood donation campaign.

The company also pushed its “Hi, Rest Stop Life Sharing Campaign” at rest stops along the highways to get blood donations from travelers and has so far collected blood from 22,000 people at highway stops, which was donated to hospitals to treat children with leukemia and other rare diseases.

The company signed a cooperation agreement with the Salvation Army in 1998 and has been collecting donations at its highway toll booths on its highways to help children with heart disease in developing nations around the world and has thus far collected 2.7 billion won and helped 203 children get operations for free. The donated money was sent to hospitals in countries including China, Mongolia, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

An official of the company said the company’s sustainable social service activities are not only of help to its overseas operations, but also pave the way for Korean companies to make inroads overseas.

The company also donated 4.35 billion won in scholarships to children hampered by highway accidents involving their parents and other adult relatives who were their main source of support. Last year, the company gave 514 million won to 294 children to help pay their school expenses. The company has also been helping poor families with the funds they collected from its employees who gave from 10,000 won to 30,000 won from their paychecks every month.

Since last year the expressway corp. has been providing chances for real lessons for people at its green highway classes, classes on ecology and a road school in the name of education giveaways. So far, some 9,280 people got the real lessons provided by the company using its assets.

The company signed contracts on Feb. 5 with the Office of Forestry, CJ Korea Express, and the Green Alliance to grow trees on closed highways with 200,000 square meters in space to produce lumber pellets.

In the days ahead, the company plans to plant 240,000 Italian poplars on 15 closed highways around the country to produce lumber pellets and give them to welfare institutions. This year, the company will plant those trees on its 4,400 square meter experimental forest near the Yongdong Express-way passing near Wonju, Gangwon Provin-ce.

Korea Expressway Corp. was established on Feb. 15, 1969 to construct and manage expressways throughout the nation. Its total purpose is to offer fast, safe and pleasant services on  its expressways.

The company 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 $200. These expressways, which the nation was only able to build after overcoming many serious adversities, became the basis for Korea’s dramatic economic growth, called “the Miracle of the Han River.”