Korea-Japan underwater tunnel?

I've written about it before, this idea of an undersea tunnel connecting South Korea's Pusan or Kŏjedo to Japan's Kyushu via Tsushima Island, several times in the past. It intrigues me.

Well, apparently it also intrigues the folks at the Chosun Ilbo (who usually only get intrigued by pictures of nude or scantily clad women).

They write that such a grand undertaking would take ten to fifteen years to construct and cost 110 to 120 trillion won. Trillion as in cho (조), a number you rarely ever get a chance to use (lop off three of the zeroes to see how much it would be in dollars). We could see this happening around the year 2020 (but don't expect too many English teachers to be helping out).

(HT to The Marmot and his Twitter feed)

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"World's longest seabed tunnel" completed off Pusan

The Epoch Times has an interesting piece on the 3.7-kilometer seabed tunnel that is to connect Kŏjedo Island and Kadŏkto Island with Pusan and the rest of the Mainland. There isn't an official name yet, apparently, though it is being called the Kŏga Tunnel (가거침매터널, after the first syllables of Kŏjedo and Kadŏkto).

The Korean-language Joongang Ilbo (from which I snagged the above image) has a neat graphic on how it was put together. I wonder if this technology could be used for a future tunnel connecting Japan's Kyushu Island and Korea's Kyŏngsang region beneath the Korea Strait, one that is getting a second look.