By Byun Duk-kun
Staff Reporter

Ahead of ``Sollal,’’ or Lunar New Year’s Day, this Saturday, a great migration has started with over 30 million South Koreans heading for their hometowns for family celebrations.

The Ministry of Construction and Transportation (MOCT) earlier predicted the number of people traveling to their hometowns this holiday will reach at least 30.86 million this year. It expected 2.49 million cars to leave the Seoul area carrying families to traditional New Year’s celebrations.

Although major national highways and roads were still flowing smoothly as of noon yesterday, the Korea Highway Corporation (KHC) expected the traffic to build up once companies let their employees out on the last working day of the lunar calendar.

Over 128,000 cars had left Seoul as of 12:00 p.m. yesterday according to KHC official Lee Jae-kwang, and more than 150,000 cars were still expected to leave the city later in the day.

``The traffic isn’t too bad even compared to regular weekdays when we have about 18,000 cars per hour. But because of the shortened holiday period from the usual four days to only three days, traffic congestion may continue until tomorrow,’’ Lee said.

The number of cars leaving Seoul averaged 19,000 per hour as of 12:00 p.m. yesterday, according to Lee.

Lee expected over 300,000 cars to leave the capital city sometime today.

The Seoul-Pusan trip, which usually takes about four and a half hours, is expected to take around nine hours and thirty minutes, while traveling from Seoul to Kwangju is expected to take more than eight hours, according to Lee.

Public transportation, including buses and trains, had an early start yesterday. As the tickets for as many as 125 regularly scheduled trains sold out, the Korean National Railroad (KORAIL) allocated an extra 35 temporary trains yesterday. However, the tickets for all 35 temporary trains had sold out as of yesterday morning, according to KORAIL officials.

``We only have a couple of standing-room tickets left for afternoon trains,’’ a Seoul station official said.

To help relieve the overcrowding of trains, the Seoul Express Bus Terminal put in place 480 extra buses to run additional 1,029 runs, according to MOCT director Kim Kwang-jae in charge of the transport and logistics policy division.