Highways congested on Lunar New Year's Day

Major highways across South Korea saw heavy traffic on Sunday as more people started to head back to Seoul after visiting their hometowns in observance of the Lunar New Year holiday, highway officials said.

The Lunar New Year holiday, which spans from Saturday to Monday, is one of the country's biggest holidays, along with the Chuseok holiday, the Korean version of Thanksgiving Day. This year's holiday is shorter than usual as it falls on the weekend, causing people to rush back to Seoul after spending time with their families in their hometowns.

Korea Expressway Corp. said traffic congestion on Seoul-bound roads continued throughout the day, but began to ease somewhat on several highways starting in the evening.

It is estimated that some 380,000 cars bound for Seoul will return on Sunday. As of 7:00 p.m., more than 70 percent of those cars had already returned to the capital city.

"Gridlock on major expressways has begun to ease in the evening, but congestion is not likely to immediately ease as there are still many vehicles hitting the road," said an official at Korea Expressway. [Yonhap]