[EDITORIAL]Economic merits first

People in the Gwangju-Mokpo area in South Jeolla Province still remember that there were as many as 11 "ground-breaking ceremonies" for building an expressway between the two major cities since the 1960s. The project to connect the two cities about 80 kilometers apart was conceived by President Park Chung-hee in the early 1960s, but the successive administrations showed little enthusiasm to finish the work in the center of antigovernment struggles for decades. After repeated delays, it was finally finished during the Kim Dae-jung administration.

When President Roh Moo-hyun indicated in his message congratulating the opening of the new office complex of the South Jeolla provincial government in Muan last week that the government would advance the laying of a high-speed railway to the province, and when Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan echoed it, people felt another election was approaching. Until early this year, government authorities had maintained that extending the KTX to Gwangju or Mokpo was not considered because it had little economic merit.

The president stressed that a project like the Honam (Jeolla) high-speed railroad should be considered on the basis of "a vision for the future, for the development of the entire nation," not solely of the population factor or the present economic needs. A feasibility study is scheduled to be finished at the end of the year, but the presidential remarks will certainly spur the project, which was originally set to begin in 2008.

However, any political consideration of local public sentiment should be barred from interfering in making a final plan for the bullet train, which is estimated to cost some 15 trillion won. Without pressing economic needs, the costly project can only be abandoned, say after the next elections.

What is more urgent, according to Jeolla residents, is building highways linking the southern end of the West Coast Highway to eastern parts of the province and beyond. The absence of direct connection with other routes reduces the usefulness of the new highway.