Feature
Road transportation policies and measure in South Korea
Authors
Jeong-Gyu Kang Korea Expressway Corporation Research Institute (South Korea)
Je-Jin Park Korea Expressway Corporation Research Institute (South Korea)
Illustrations © Korean Expressway Corporation
As of the end of 2012, the area of South Korea was 100,208 km2 and its population was 50,950,000 with 90.9% of the population living in urban areas. The length of the Korean road network at the end of 2012 was 109,930 km, including 4,044 km of expressways; 79.8% of the roads were paved. Whilst there is a general trend for the length of the road network to increase, the rapid increase in the number of registered vehicles (3.6 million in 1990 to 18.87 million in 2012) means that the amount of road space available for each driver is decreasing. A total of 28,263,000 people have a driving license, or 1 in 1.8 of the total population.