Anywhere in Korea in less than two hours

Well, anywhere that isn't on Chejudo (not yet).

The Ministry of Spending Lots of Money on Big Projects has announced that it will spend 88 trillion won (currently about US$81 billion) to expand railway lines dedicated to the high-speed KTX trains:

The government plans to expand the amount of tracks dedicated to KTX trains, which can travel over 230 kilometers per hour, to 2,362.4 kilometers by 2020 from the current 368.5 kilometers. Currently, KTX trains run on the dedicated tracks and normal tracks, on which they have to slow their speeds.

That 230 kph sounds a bit off. My past experience on them clocked in at over 300 kph. Maybe they're talking about an average speed (including accelerating and decelerating).

But will he be back?

(Arn)old boy.

As I reported the other day, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was bound for South Korea to talk business, particularly the railway business. But, as the San Francisco Chronicle reports, he also talked up the pending KORUS FTA and trans-Pacific trade in general:

As part of his trade mission in Asia, the governor signed an agreement Tuesday "to increase collaboration on trade and technology" with the country's most populous province, Gyeonggi-do, where Seoul and South Korea's other major cities are located.

This morning (Seoul time), Schwarzenegger was scheduled to call for ratification of the U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement at a breakfast meeting of U.S. and South Korean business executives there.

The long-stalled agreement has been a top agenda item of Bay Area trade conferences I've attended in the past couple of weeks. South Korea is California's fifth-largest trading partner. The state's annual exports to South Korea, Asia's fourth-largest economy, grew to approximately $6 billion last year. That includes $500 million of agricultural products - beef, rice, nuts, oranges - according to the California Farm Bureau.

"We are talking about a market of 50 million increasingly affluent consumers who really like and are willing to pay for high-quality, safe agricultural products, and that is something that California has to offer," said Dan Sumner, director of UC Davis' Agricultural Issues Center.

Um, point of information: Seoul is not so much located in Kyŏnggi-do Province as it is surrounded by the donut-shaped administrative unit. Which is why we Seoulites try not to piss off the Kyŏnggi-doers. (And "South Korea's other major cities" include Pusan, Taegu, Taejŏn, Kwangju, etc., which are nowhere near Kyŏnggi-do; sounds like someone at the Chronicle needs to do a bit of homework.)

Anyway, the Gubernator wouldn't be a bad person to have in your corner as you're lobbying Washington to pass the FTA. And making nice with him so that your trains might get accepted for California's high-speed rail project isn't a bad move either.

Arnie coming to Korea

Loyal Monster Island readers should know that high-speed rail is coming to California, and Korea's existing system, the KTX, is being held up as a model (along with high-speed rail in other countries). Well, it looks like our governor (Arnold Schwarzenegger, you may have heard of him) is taking a tour of Asia to check out the rail systems in China, South Korea, and Japan:

Schwarzenegger had a photo opportunity Sunday at a train station on a high-speed rail link between Shanghai and Nanjing. He spent Saturday, the first day of his weeklong trade mission of nearly 100 business leaders, hobnobbing in Hangzhou with Jack Ma, founder of Internet trading behemoth Alibaba.com, and other Chinese entrepreneurs.

The governor will also try out high-speed rail in Japan and South Korea - two others among at least seven countries that have officially shown interest in helping develop California's system - assuming the state can find the money.

"There is great potential over there and in Japan and Korea, when it comes to building our high-speed rail and also providing the money for building the high-speed rail," Schwarzenegger told reporters before leaving California.

The fact-finding mission is also aimed at better understanding the technologies on offer.

He'll probably check out the plans for even faster railway lines currently under construction in South Korea and Japan.

South Korean technology should also be familiar to the Gubernator, what with SoKo trains already being put to use in SoCal.

I hope he reads this 2006 post before he rides the KTX. I'd hate for him to not get a seat or end up with motion sickness.

Super shinkansen

Though I've been to Japan dozens of times in the 1990s and 2000s, it wasn't until 2005 on a trip with relatives who wanted to crisscross the country that I actually road the Shinkansen, Japan's bullet train.

I had been on other forms of the JR (Japan Rail), and the truth is, I was a little disappointed. I was expecting a super smooth ride in an ultra-clean space vehicle of sorts, but instead I was on a train that was adequate, but clearly showing its age. In particular, I thought that the ride was shaky and uneasy at times. My experiences on the much newer but equally fast KTX were much more to my expectation (though it, too, is not perfectly smooth).

Still, with the Shinkansen and the KTX, what is there to complain about? They shoot you across the country at 305-kph, getting you to where you're going way faster than if you took the bus or even a plane (since you would have to get to/from the airport).

According to this Los Angeles Times article, however, Japan is looking to enhance the experience with newer trains expected in service in 2011:

An E-5 series of train scheduled to take to the rails in 2011 promises speeds of nearly 200 mph, improved suspensions and a car-tilting system to make the ride more comfortable on curves. Power-reclining shell seats in first class will provide what engineers call a "peaceful and soothing time during your travels."

Amtrak, eat your heart out.

Furthermore, and much more ambitiously, they are looking at improvements encapsulated by what I would call Shinkansen 2.0: a network of maglev trains that would zoom along at 310 mph — nearly 500 kph! This network is set to be in place by around 2025, carrying around 200,000 passengers per day.

As Korea itself gets ready to open the final high-speed portions of the Kyŏngbu (Seoul-to-Pusan) and Honam (Seoul-to-Kwangju/Mokpo) KTX, one wonders what is in store for the future. Korea rejected the German-based maglev and Japanese-based Shinkansen for the French-based CGV, in part because of technology transfers. Will it plan future projects (say, a Seoul-Shinuiju-via-Pyongyang route) around these ultra-fast trains? Will the KTX tracks be reworked to allow for the faster trains? Will a proposed undersea route from Korea to Japan be along these lines?

Ah, the possibilities are endless.

Thoughts on the KTX

As a postmortem to my recent trip to Pusan, here are some thoughts. 

1. Don't wait until the last minute on the last day of a weekend or holiday to buy a KTX ticket (or any other railway service) for a train headed back to Seoul.

2. If you do wait until the last minute, be prepared for the inevitability that they will tell you Maejin! (sold out). Anticipating this, go to a ticket counter staffed by a person of a different gender than yourself and ask with puppy dog eyes* if there isn't some way you can get back home. Look as desperate as possible (emphasis: desperate, not desperado, which will backfire). This can get the person not your gender to head to the backroom to get that one ticket that was cancelled and that they've been holding just for the right case**.

3. Avoid getting a seat facing backward (half the seat on the KTX face backward so that they won't have to turn the half-kilometer-long trains around, which would have required knocking down a lot of buildings in both downtown Seoul and downtown Pusan). In a few people susceptible to motion sickness, the backward-facing seats can trigger queasiness.

4. Right now the two-hour-and-fifty-minute ride from Seoul to Pusan or back is perfect for watching an entire movie on DVD, giving you enough time to settle in to your seat and also allow time for potty breaks. Once the Taegu-to-Pusan leg of the KTX is finally completed, allowing the breakneck 300-kph from Seoul to Taegu to continue all the way to the Korea Strait, travel time will be reduced enough that your movie options will be limited to Disney flicks and sequels to action films.

5. Each car on the train has a monitor in the middle which will tell you the train's speed when it's over at 250 kph. When it hits 300 kph, you will be tempted to look out the window and remark how it doesn't really look like you're going that fast, after which you will try to fixate on certain points and use some form of one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi to verify or refute the speed appearing on the monitor. This is a good way to get very dizzy. Instead, bring a portable GPS device and press it against the window to verify your velocity.

*If you've never utilized puppy dog eyes to get something you want, practice in the mirror first. If rather than looking endearingly desperate, you look you are heavily medicated and about to vomit, scrap the puppy dog look in favor of yelling loudly in a foreign language. A properly staged "scene" involving shouting in English has been known to be effective, even if it engenders residual resentment toward whatever nationality your are (American citizens: this is when you wear a Maple Leaf somewhere on your person), but that's the problem of whomever comes after you.

Also, try to avoid using words like "fuck" and "shit," since people with poor English skills might mistake these well-known obscenities as profanity directed at them. Example: you might say, "How could I be so fucking stupid?!" but it may be interpreted as, "Hakeidblo chrintikiho FUCK YOU!" Similarly, "Sometimes my brain is as worthless as shit" can be heard as, "Your country is so full of shit." This will not help you get a ticket.

**True story. Happens a lot.