Seoul, South Korea, Mar 31: The country launched its new bullet train service this week at a landscape-blurring 300 kph (185 mph), catapulting the country into an elite high-speed rail club and fulfilling a decades-old ambition. The project is a coming-of-age for a country obsessed with technology, but also a reminder of obstacles overcome and those that lie ahead.
At an inaugural test run Tuesday, acting president Goh Kun declared the trains "the foundation of our prosperity in the 21st century."
"What we have envied and thought of as a dream has became reality," he said.
But since its inception in the 1980s, South Korea`s bullet train has been plagued with cost overruns, delays, route and design changes, shoddy workmanship and high-rolling bribery allegations, one involving a former Miss Korea.
Supporters concede the sleek trains are already outdated at a time when countries like China are using futuristic magnetic levitation rails. Its vaunted April 1 launch -- already six years behind schedule -- is now tailed by terror concerns and financial woes.

"About 20 years ago, it was the best that was available," said Lee Inwon, a transportation professor at Seoul`s Hongik University who was on the initial planning committee. "We`ll have to evaluate just how good it is after it opens".
The cone-nosed, blue-and-gray KTX, or Korea Train Express, will nearly halve the almost five-hour trip, using conventional trains, from Seoul to the second biggest city, Busan, in the southeast. A spur line connects the city of Mokpo in the southwest.
Of the 46 trains, 12 were made by GEC-Alstom of France, based on the design of France`s TGV bullet trains, the rest by South Korea with the help of the French company.
But the technology transfer is being used as the basis for a next-generation of homegrown South Korean bullet trains, expected to race at 350 kph. That project is dubbed the G7, a patriotic nod to Seoul`s push to join the Group of Seven rich industrialized countries, an ambition that resonates with the public.
Bureau Report