‘동북아 고속도로 연결 계획’ 구상과 그 추진방안

Abstract

This paper attempts to examine the Northeast Asian Highway Project, which aims to link the capital cities and the nodal cities of northeast Asian countries, covering South Korea, North Korea, China, Japan and Russia. The practical needs for carrying forward this grand project have been increasingly emphasized by policy makers and academic scholars, largely due to the remarkable increase in interdependencies among northeast Asian countries, in terms of trade and transportation flows. We propose three stages and routes for connecting the northeast Asian countries. The project starts from the first stage which links South Korea through North Korea to China. The second stage is to link South Korea through North Korea to Far East Russia. Finally, the third stage would be the most challenging for successfully completing the project in that the underwater tunnel passing through the Strait of Korea should be constructed to couple South Korea with Japan. In last section, we discuss the critical issues that should be considered to go ahead with the project.