Cost apart, can South Korea build a railroad? Its reputation has taken a major knock from the disastrous history of the KTX, the country's biggest ever public works project. First mooted in 1989, to be partly ready by 1998, the deadline has been put back three times due to frequent changes of design and route. Shoddy workmanship has entailed rebuilding, costs have leapt from W10.7trn to W22.2trn ($20bn), and plans have been scaled back. Service to Taegu is now scheduled to start in April 2004, with the final stretch to Pusan not opening until 2010.
Now the tale has a new twist, with claims that an $11m commission allegedly paid by Alstom (which won the contract) to a fugitive lobbyist went - via the Agency for National Security Planning, successor to the KCIA - to fund the 1996 election war chest of the then-ruling party, now the main opposition Grand National Party. This charge threatens to sour an already bad-tempered political mood in Seoul, where parliament has been paralysed for over two months.
Nor is the KTX the only weak link in South Korea's infrastructure plans. A recent Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) report revealed that the new Inchon International Airport (IIA) - due to replace overcrowded Kimpo as Seoul's main gateway next March, and touted as a hub for the wider east Asian region - needs a W1.5trn infusion to manage its W4trn debt burden. Here again, the blueprint has changed three times while costs soared from W3.4bn to W7.9bn.
All in all, perhaps South Korea should focus on getting its own infrastructure projects back on track before taking on the extra burden of the north. Kim Dae-jung's iron silk road is a noble vision, whose day will come. But the moral of KTX and IIA is that the devil is in the details.