Great exodus to hometown begins

The annual homecoming migration of Koreans to observe lunar New Year¡¯s Day is already underway, officials said Friday. Officially, the New Year holiday begins on January 23, but as a number of companies decided to give special holidays to their employees this Saturday, Sunday and Monday, a number of people hit the road to their hometowns in the countryside on Friday to avoid traffic jams.

Major expressways across the country including the Chungbu Expressway suffered major traffic snarl-ups from the afternoon as they became choked with automobiles. According to transportation authorities, 6,370 vehicles per hour passed the Kungnae-dong tollgate on the Kyungbu Expressway in the afternoon, about ten percent more than in normal times. The Dong-Seoul tollgate on the Chungbu Expressway and the Maesong tollgate on the West Coast Expressway also reported similar increases in vehicles passing through.

The Korea Highway Corporation estimated that a total of 259,000 vehicles escaped the city in the day.

There were great crowds of people at Seoul Station in the afternoon as about 1,000 hometown visitors, more than double the number of travelers at normal times, packed the waiting room. As tickets were sold out, people formed long lines to secure returned tickets or bought them from scalpers.

Kimpo Airport also met a large wave of travelers.

Homecoming travelers began to appear from 1 p.m. carrying gift packages and those who had failed to secure tickets waited for long hours after placing their names on the waiting list.

Kim Kwang-Jae, chief of the transportation policy department of the Ministry of Construction and Transportation, advised travelers that they could save a great deal of trouble if they traveled late at night or early in the morning.

Song Jin-Hup jinhup@donga.com