Opportunity for Korean Road & Traffic Tech Industry to Make a Leap Abroad

A grand gala of global road transport people will take place at the Songdo Convensia in Incheon from Sept. 23 for a four-day run. The international events include the 3rd International Road & Transportation Exhibition (ROTREX), Asia’s largest road and traffic fair, the 13th Road Engineering Association of Asia and Australasia (REAAA) Conference and the annual meeting of the World Road Association (PIARC). “The international events will help lift Korea’s status in the international community with the introduction of the nation’s advanced road and transport technologies to the world. We are also focusing on enhancing the nation’s competitiveness by expediting the domestic relevant industries via the International Road and Transportation Exhibition,” said Lieu Chull-ho, CEO of Korea Express Corp and chairman of the Korea Road & Transportation Association.
Q: A grand international event for the road and transportation sector will be held at the Songdo Convensia in Incheon from Sept. 23 for a four-day run. Can you tell us more about it?
A: The events to be held are the 3rd International Road & Transportation Exhibition (ROTREX), Asia’s largest road and traffic fair, the 13th Road Engineering Association of Asia and Australasia (REAAA) Conference and the annual meeting of the World Road Association (PIARC). On the sidelines of the events, an international symposium on 14 areas of the road and transportation sector will also be held in the presence of ranking officials from 12 countries. There will be various events like the ministerial meeting and others designed to result in MOUs for technological alliances with participating nations and industrial and cultural tours to promote Korea’s image.
In particular, I believe the REAAA, mainly comprising Asia and Oceania countries, will seek close cooperation with the World Road Association (PIARC), which is mainly composed of European nations in a bid to ensure development of road and transportation technologies beyond the differences of continental and national boundaries.
Q: What do you expect from the events and the exhibition?
A: The 3rd International Road and Transportation Exhibition is Asia’s largest such event and is expected to attract industrial products from the road and traffic sectors from both home and abroad. Some 200 enterprises from 10 countries like Japan and Australia will take part in the exposition at some 600 booths. Various products will be on display in areas comprising road, tunnel, bridge construction, maintenance and repair along with state-of-the-art technologies in road signs, facilities, traffic control systems, parking systems, intelligent traffic systems and parking facilities, etc.
The ratio of foreign companies participating increased 5 percent from a year ago, while the number of display categories rose from three to five, showing that the exhibition has been making rapid progress in terms of both quality and quantity to the extent that it is emerging as the nation’s most representative fair in the road and transportation sector.
We expect some 22,000 foreign buyers and local visitors will take part in the exposition, compared to 12,000 buyers and 16,000 participants for the first and second events. This can be regarded as a relatively higher figure in view of the lingering economic downturn gripping the nation and the world. In particular, the event will also induce government officials and experts in charge of road and transportation from many countries as well as buyers. It will also be linked to the REAAA Conference and the Incheon Global Fair and Festival, generating a synergistic effect. The international events will likely create some 16 billion won worth of indirect economic effect while helping some 500 billion won worth of domestic road and traffic products advance into overseas markets, thus greatly enhancing the nation’s international prestige.
Q: The World Road Association will also hold its annual meeting during the session. The hosting of the conference of the WRA, one of the three major international organizations, has long been cherished by the domestic road and transport sector. Are you poised to bid for the international conference?
A: The World Road Association is one of the world’s three major organizations on behalf of the road and transportation sector. It has 142 member countries. Korea already hosted the World Road Association Conference in 1998 and the ITS Congress in 1998 in Seoul. Now we are holding the REAAA Conference in Songdo, Incheon. Hosting the conference of the World Road Association will help upgrade the nation’s international status in the road and transportation areas. To this end, we established the world organization’s Korea branch in August 2007 with the goal of hosting the world conference in 2015.
Currently, Kang Jae-soo, director in charge of technology at Korea Expressway Corp., is acting as a steering committee member of the branch along with 16 experts as technical subcommittee members. The current REAAA Conference will surely be a stepping stone for the nation to host the global event in 2015.
Q: Various kinds of events are planned like industrial and cultural tours, the spouse program, traffic safety program and the highway food contest. Can you give us some specifics?
A: We are planning a “spouse program” for participants from Sept. 22-24 to provide them with chances to look around tourist destinations in Incheon and visit the Incheon Global Fair and Festival. On Sept. 25-26, we will guide them to Songdo Convensia, the Incheon Grand Bridge, Incheon International Airport, highway traffic information center, Korea Road & Transport Institute and research institutes and public relations centers of major domestic companies. Under a cultural tour, they will be invited to the Imjingak Pavilion in the border village of Panmunjom, the Dora Observation Post, the National Museum and Korean Folk Village.
On the last day, they will be able to visit the Namsan Hanok Village to experience kimchi making and then drop by Myeongdong and Namdaemun for shopping. We are also planning a highway food contest so that the participants can taste Korean food while participating in the exposition.
Given the fact that Korea has ranked third among OECD member nations in terms of children’s deaths, half of which are the result of traffic accidents, we have prepared programs so that the children can learn about traffic safety and how to avoid being in traffic accidents. In addition, in order to maximize convenience for the participants, we will set up an information center at the Incheon International Airport and operate shuttle buses linking the airport to hotels and event venues. In short, we will offer a perfect total service covering everything from arrival to departure. For domestic visitors we will provide some 20 buses to the city.
In the meantime, the organizing committee has established measures to cope with the spread of swine flu. Officials from the committee, Incheon City and related authorities have held several rounds of meetings toward that end, having agreed to install high-tech sensors at event sites to secure the health of participants. For official accommodations, officials will stay to check the temperature of participants.
Q: There have been increasing cases of victims of traffic accidents on highways. Do you have any measures to cope with this?
A: The corporation has been pressing ahead with campaigns to “reduce the deaths from highway accidents by 50 percent” by the year 2012. With the goal of making the year the first year of advanced traffic safety, we have held rallies and signed contracts with police agencies and hosted debates with traffic experts.
To prevent accidents from drowsy driving, we have opened 16 sites originally scheduled for service stations as resting areas while operating a speed guidance system between service areas from July. By publicizing accident spots, we have been alerting drivers.
We have also been utilizing highway service stations as areas for public relations regarding traffic safety through, for instance, displays of relevant photos. We have also been educating the people by distributing CDs on traffic safety.
Q: Do you have any other policies related to domestic and overseas projects?
A: The corporation has been pressing for the LOHAS 1000 Project for linking the social paradigm to highways. The project has been designed to plant some 10 million trees in addition to the existing 13 million ones by the year 2012 as part of the green energy project to absorb some 230,000 tons of carbon dioxide every year.
We already planted 1.55 million trees in the first year of the project’s implementation and are aiming to plant 2.5 million trees this year.
We are also creating a series of projects to enhance environmentally and ecologically-friendly development of roads across the nation for the purpose of preserving wild animals, promoting recycling of natural resources and setting up user-oriented resting places. All these efforts will be focused on forming a 6,000 km-long ecological highway system around the nation and our being reborn as an environmentally-friendly state-run company deserving the people’s love and respect. Based on 40 years of knowhow in the area of road construction, we have been making inroad into the markets of Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Iraq and Laos since January 2005 when we established a department in charge of overseas projects. We are also continuing efforts to participate in road construction projects in Algeria, the United States, Iraq and Nepal. We have been setting up a human network with five countries around the world. We also plan to join hands with domestic energy companies in bids to advance into overseas road construction, which will serve as the model for state-run firms to make forays into foreign markets. nw

The soon-to-be Incheon Bridge with a sunrise in the background.

President Lieu Chull-ho of the Korea Expressway Corp. and also the chairman of the REAAA Conference and the 3rd ROTREX Organizing Committee