The Reunification Highway, officially known as the Pyongyang-Kaesong Motorway (), is a
controlled-access highway
A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway and expressway. Other similar terms i ...
in
North Korea. It connects the capital
Pyongyang to the
Joint Security Area at the
Korean Demilitarized Zone via
Sariwon and
Kaesong
Kaesong (, ) is a special city in the southern part of North Korea (formerly in North Hwanghae Province), and the capital of Korea during the Taebong kingdom and subsequent Goryeo dynasty. The city is near the Kaesong Industrial Region close t ...
. The distance to
Seoul in
South Korea is present on signs on the highway, although it is not possible to cross the border to South Korea.
It is 170 km long,
with multiple paved lanes and several tunnels. Tourists have reported that there is very light traffic, as well as multiple checkpoints and
tank traps.
Construction began in 1987 in preparation for the
13th World Festival of Youth and Students
In music or music theory, a thirteenth is the note thirteen scale degrees from the root of a chord and also the interval between the root and the thirteenth. The interval can be also described as a compound sixth, spanning an octave ...
to be held in Pyongyang in 1989. The project was economically ill-advised because North Korea had hitherto consistently focused on developing railway links for transport, diminishing the need for new expressways.
Construction finished on April 15, 1992,
the birthday of North Korea's president
Kim Il-sung. Its name was chosen to promote the
reunification of Korea
Korean reunification () is the potential reunification of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea into a single Korean sovereign state. The process towards reunification was started by the June 15th North–South Joi ...
. The entire highway is part of
Asian Highway 1.
References
External links
*
{{coords, 38.4349, 126.1387, display=title
Roads in North Korea
AH1