South Korea will increase the number of electric vehicle chargers at highway service areas nationwide to over 1,000 by the end of 2022, the transport ministry said Sunday.

Currently, there are 435 EV chargers at the country's highway rest stops. The government plans to increase the number to 730 by the end of this month and then add more than 300 chargers next year, it said in a press statement.

The move is meant to help meet rising demand for EVs and the charging infrastructure, as the government plans to supply 4.5 million pure electric and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles by 2030.

In the January-October period, the number of highway EV charger users came to 872,000, already exceeding the 700,000 users for all of 2020, the ministry said. (Yonhap)