Mass Exodus of 33,000,000 People

A `Mass Exodus of the Nation`s Citizens` began on the 9th for the trip home with four days before the Lunar New Years Day.

This New Years, 33,000,000 people are expected to travel through highways, railroads, and ferries for the holidays.

With the holiday officially beginning on the 9th, the roads were jammed with cars stopped in their tracks by afternoon.

But the traffic jam did not happen before the afternoon hours.

Cars could travel on the roads like any other weekend in the morning, but the number of cars increased by the afternoon and soon began to crawl along.

The ticket sale rate for the Kangnam Express Bus Terminal Seoul-Pusan line was 65.3 percent until this day and people could purchase tickets up until the afternoon. Likewise, the Yongdong line, which had a 95.8 percent sale rate, prepared an addition 149 vehicles and people could purchase tickets on site.

The Korea Highway Corporation (KHC) predicted 270,000 vehicles to be traveling on the roads all day.

One KHC authority said, "Because the New Year holiday this year falls near the weekend, the home-trip traffic will not be as jammed up as in the past, but we expect there to be concentrated traffic on the 12th and the 13th."

Dong-Yong Min mindy@donga.com