Major highways became increasingly congested with traffic on Monday afternoon as South Koreans started to head home after visiting their hometowns and family graves for the Lunar New Year.
The Lunar New Year season, which began on Saturday and runs till Tuesday, is one of two major holidays in South Korea, the other being Chuseok, in which families gather in their hometowns and visit family graves.
Nearly 31.54 million people out of the country's 49 million population were expected to hit the road during the holiday, according to transportation authorities.
Travelers heading back home following their holiday visits started to form major traffic congestion on main local highways early Monday, said the state-run Korea Highway Corp. The traffic jams may reach their peak on Monday afternoon, the company added.
As of noon, it took eight hours and forty minutes to drive the 453 kilometers from the southern port city of Busan to Seoul. The average travel time from Daejeon, some 150 km south of Seoul, to the capital was more than four hours, the highway agency said.
About 380,000 cars are predicted to return to Seoul from other cities and towns during the day while about the same number of vehicles is expected to leave the capital, it added.
"The traffic congestion may hit its peak in the afternoon before easing up in the evening," a company official said. (Yonhap News)
