Highway Linking Daegu, Pohang Nearing Completion
- Includes 9 tunnels, 82 bridges, piercing thru Taebaek Mountain Range

Korea Highway Corp. is currently involved in the construction of a 68.42 km long highway linking Daegu and Pohang divided into 9 sections.
The special characteristics of this segment of the highway network stretching around the country is that it features environment friendly elements and builders were selected in bidding by sectors including 2,3,7, and 8 sectors, KHCOs Daegu-Pohang Construction Office said recently.
Major structures include a junction, three interchanges, four business facilities, three rest areas, 9 tunnels, 36 long bridges, 46 small bridges and four to six lanes covered with cement.
Business facilities are located in Cheongtongwachon, Buk-yeongcheon, Seo-pohang, and Pohang. Rest areas are located in Wachon, Cheongtong, and Yeongcheon. Length of tunnels totals 9,290 meters, Long bridges 11,310 meters, and small bridges 1,600 meters.
The highway will link a wide area on land with new harbor areas to facilitate smooth transportation between the areas. It will be connected to the Seoul-Busan, highways in the inner-areas of the peninsula and Jungang Highway to speed up transportation and spur balanced development of the regions.
It will cut the transportation time between Daegu and Pohang by 50 minutes from an hour and 40 minutes.
A total budget of 1.995 trillion won has been allocated for the project to be undertaken from April 1998 and December 2004, a period stretching for 6 years and 8 months. 21 construction companies including Namkwang Construction have been mobilized to build the highway segment.
The highway starts from Do-dong, Dong ward, Daegu and ends in Hakjeon-ri, Yeonil-eup, Nam ward, Pohang, North Geyongsang Province. The four and six-lane highway goes through Gyeongsan and Yongchon.
Construction of the highway started in April 1998 and is planned to be finished in December, this year.
A total of 1.7 million workers would have been mobilized for the project, along with 350,000 heavy equipment, 630,000 tons of cement and 130,000 tons of steel rods by the time the project is completed.
The highway is part of the second loop connecting Central Inland, the Central Line and the Seoul-Busan Line so that Pohang, the nation's steel industry's Mecca is linked to the national highway network, especially with its new port facilities, which is an advanced base for the Pacific-rim, expected to boost the national competitive edge by easily facilitating the transport of material from the Pohang region.
The highway is projected to trim the travel time between Daegu and Pohang by 52 minutes to 48 minutes from a hour and 40 minutes thereby saving 260.3 billion won in logistic expenses annually.
The highway is expected to ease traffic jams in the Daegu-Pohang section of the National Highway and the Daegu-Yeongcheon section of the Seoul-Busan Highway. The highway segment is expected to contribute to balanced development of national land and the tourism industry.
During its 6 years and 8 months of work, starting from April, 1998, and ending in December, everyone and all companies involved with the project did their best to complete the project on time, although the project had its share of trouble including delayed allocation of budget and bankruptcy of some of the construction firms, in addition to increases in costs of construction materials and damages from typhoons "Rusa" and "Mamie."
Since the highway went through a number of rivers, reservoirs and the Taebaek Mountain Range. Around 32 percent of the length of the highway is comprised of 9 tunnels, some 9,290 meters long and 82 bridges 12,910 meters long, making the construction very tough.
Especially, many part of the highway included soft land, which were collapsed and washed away in the wake of typhoons. However, designers and builders were able to come up with the best construction method after conducting safety checks in the area jointly with expert technicians, research institutes, and academicians to make the highway safer. They used measuring equipment for the safety of passengers and workers during the construction.
They also built five land bridges and a tunnel for animals to move and ecological concerns to focus on the construction of an environmentally friendly highway.
The residents of the areas where the highway passed through lodged complaints about noises from passing vehicles and the highway corporation solved the issues in a satisfactory manner. Altogether, there were about 500 complaints by the residents of the cities and towns along the highway. The construction firms helped the residents of the towns where typhoons "Rusa" and "Mamies" swept through with their heavy equipment to speed up their recovery from typhoon damages. nw