The Japan–Korea Undersea Tunnel, also known as the Korea–Japan Undersea Tunnel, is a proposed tunnel project to connect Japan with South Korea via an undersea tunnel crossing the Korea Strait that would use the strait islands of Iki and Tsushima, a straight-line distance of approximately at its shortest.Sullivan, Walter. Progress In Technology Revives Interest In Great Tunnels, New York Times, June 24, 1986. Retrieved August 15, 2010.
The proposal, which had been under discussion intermittently since 1917, was followed by more concrete planning during the early 1940s. It was not pursued, however, until after World War II.
In early 2008, the proposal was a subject of renewed discussions by 10 senior Japanese lawmakers, who established a new committee to pursue it.Japan-Korea Undersea Tunnel May Join Old Rivals , Inventorspot.com, 2008-02-19, retrieved: March 17, 2008Japanese Lawmakers Eye Underwater Train to South Korea, Agence France-Presse, February 15, 2008, retrieved March 17, 2008.Korea-Japan Tunnel Finally in Sight , English.Chosun.com, February 21, 2009, retrieved April 3, 2009. This was followed by a study group from both countries in early 2009, which agreed to form a committee for the creation of specific construction plans. Its head, Huh Moon-do, a former director of South Korea's National Unification Board and a key member of the former Chun Doo-hwan government, said that the tunnel would help regional economics and would "play a key role in pursuing bilateral free trade talks," which are currently stalled. In 2009, joint studies estimated high construction costs for a Japan-South Korea tunnel and concluded it would not be economically feasible supported by another South Korean study, which in 2011 found proposed tunnels to Japan and China financially unfeasible. The Korea Transport Institute estimated combined construction costs at ₩100 trillion (US$90 billion), with a very low benefit-to-cost ratio.
In 2022, the assassination of Shinzo Abe and subsequent investigation of the Unification Church, which collected donations for the tunnel, led politicians to distance themselves from the project. The Unification Church are strong proponents of the tunnel.
The proposed tunnel would be more than long and serve a portion of freight traffic, as well as some of the approximately 20,000 people who travel daily between the countries.Japan-Republic of Korea Relations: Economic Relations, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan websitePark, Ki-Im Towards a Productive Korea-Japan Relationship , Korea International Trade Association, August 17, 2009. Retrieved from the Korea Herald, September 18, 2009.
Proposal history Early origins A tunnel between Japan and Korea has been discussed since the early 20th century, when Korea was a colony of the Japanese Empire having been annexed in 1910.
A very early discussion on such a tunnel was conducted in 1917 by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff officer Kuniaki Koiso. Another early proposal for the project originated in the late 1930s, as part of the Greater East Asia Railroad. In 1938, Imperial Japan's Ministry of Communications reportedly decided on a preliminary survey of the sea bottom between Japan and Korea. During World War II, the Imperial Japanese government actively pursued the project to connect it with the Korean Peninsula and, ultimately, the rest of the Asian continent.Japan Planning Tunnel 80 Miles Long to Korea, New York Times, p. 11, December 21, 1938 (subscription)
In 1939, a Japanese Railway official, Yumoto Noboru, wrote of a trans-Eurasian railway to link Japan to its Axis partner, Germany, and proposed the construction of an undersea tunnel to connect Japan with Korea via the island of Tsushima.Anderson, Damian J. "Korea-Japan Undersea Tunnel Project Spotlighted Anew," retrieved online April 21, 2009 at KoreaTimes National, January 17, 2003.Charles K. Armstrong, Samuel S. Kim, Gilbert Rozman, and Stephen Kotkin (2005) Korea at the Center: Dynamics of Regionalism in Northeast Asia, M.E. Sharpe, 2005, pp. 103–105, , . It was argued a combined undersea tunnel and land link would help safeguard Japanese communications and shipments to and from Europe, which would be imperiled by the Pacific War.
Noboru's writing was joined in the same year by a recommendation from Mr. Kuwabara, who would later assist in the creation of the undersea Seikan Tunnel, currently the world's longest undersea tunnel. In 1939, Kuwabara made the same recommendation of tunneling across the strait and connecting to a "Cross Asian Railway."ee, Man-Hyung & Kwon, Hyuk-Il. Status Quo and Conflicting Factors for the Proposed Korea-Japan Tunnel Project , Chung, Hee-Soo and Soo-Young Park, eds., Local Development and Planning in the 21st Century, Seoul: Eastern Regional Organization for Planning and Housing, 2001, pp. 33-44. Studies were soon conducted by the Japanese government on a possible Kampu (Shimonoseki-Busan) tunnel between the Japanese home islands and South Korea.Harada, Katsumasa. Technological Innovation and the Development of Transportation in Japan: Chap. 6: Transportation during Wartime (1938–1945): Policy, United Nations University Press, 1993. Retrieved from IDE-JETRO website, November 4, 2010. The plan came under serious consideration starting in 1941.
In September 1940, the Japanese Cabinet issued its overview "Outline of National Spatial Planning" study, which outlined its long-term goals for the development of its occupied conquests and spheres of influence in Asia, which it termed the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity." It further refined its plans with the outbreak of hostilities with the United States and was bent on increasing its geopolitical and ethnic ties with mainland Asia through a vastly expanded rail and marine network, with special emphasis on the Korean Peninsula land bridge to connect it with its colonies. To achieve its objectives, Japan had plans that called for "a giant leap forward" in its transportation and communications infrastructures, including Shinkansen trains, so that it could integrate all of its colonial economies and ensure the transport of war materials and other necessary supplies to and from the home islands. That coincided with the planning and the development of the dangan ressha ("bullet train") system by a Japanese chief rail engineer, Shima Yasujiro, who concurred on the links between Tokyo, Korea, and China.Hood, Christopher P. "Bullets and Trains: Exporting Japan's Shinkansen to China and Taiwan", Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus website. Retrieved 2009-8-31.Hoshikawa, T. (ed.) "The Unhappy Birth of a Tunnel (Shinkansen Zenshi, TÅkyÅ: Gakken)." Japan Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 3, 2003, pp. 324–326.
In 1941, geological surveys were conducted on Tsushima Island, and test bores were sunk to close to Kyūshū.Lee, Kwon (2001), p. 3. By August 1942, Japan's South Manchurian Railway Company had created plans for an rail network, stretching from Manchukuo to Singapore. Against that backdrop, Japan took its first concrete step for a fixed link to and through Korea to connect it with its planned vast rail network in Asia, with the construction of several bridges as well as the completion of its Kanmon undersea railway tunnel joining the Japanese islands of Kyushu and Honshu.
Although preliminary work on rail lines, bridges, and tunnels in southern Japan was started, work on the project stopped in a few years as the nation's economy and infrastructure deteriorated because of World War II. After 1943, with increasing shortages of materials, manpower, and even transportation, Japan canceled its raumordnung (spatial plan) for its vast new Asian rail infrastructure, as it turned its full-time attention to defending its home islands from invasion. The land planning organization was discontinued in 1943, and its staff was transferred to the Japanese Home Ministry.
Activities since World War II
The proposal for a fixed link between the two countries has been raised in public discussions numerous times since the end of World War II. Leaders of both countries have called for the tunnel's construction on a number of occasions.
Since the 1980s, a Japanese research group has been engaged in detailed research and exploration of prospective routes for the tunnel. In 1988, the Japanese researchers contracted a Korean company to explore the sea of Koje to document the region's geological features.
In September 2000, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung stated that a review should be performed of the project, which could enable all of Japan to be linked to Europe as "a dream of the future." Kim's comments came during a summit meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. The following month, Mori proposed moving ahead with the project at the Seoul summit of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), but South Korea and Japan stopped short of committing it as an official bilateral project.
By early 2002, the South Korean Ministry of Construction and Transportation had commissioned three research institutes to study the project's feasibility. Also in 2002, Japanese experts had estimated that the tunnel would take 15 years and cost US$77 billion to complete. Around that time (mid-2002), an easing of relations between North and South Korea gave impetus to the Japan–Korea tunnel project. The North and the South Korean governments had agreed on an inter-Korean rail line to run from Seoul to Pyongyang and then on to Sinuiju, a border city in the north on the Yalu River, as well as a road running parallel to the railway. From Sinuiju, trains could then cross the border and access the Trans-Chinese Railway (TCR) and then Russia's Trans-Siberian Railway (TSR), which would lead to all of Europe's rail networks.
In September 2002, a five-member Japanese delegation visited South Gyeongsang Governor Kim Hyuk-kyu of Korea's southeastern provincial government to discuss the proposal of an undersea tunnel. The legislative group from Japan was headed by Daizō Nozawa, a future Japanese Cabinet Minister of Justice who was then a Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) legislator in Japan's House of Councilors. Nozawa, who was then a key figure involved in Japanese civil engineering projects, toured Korea's Geoje region. The visit marked a starting point on the contemplated tunnel on the South Korean side, officials at the regional government stated.Project of S. Korea-Japan Undersea Tunnel Grabs New Spotlight, AsiaPulse News, October 2, 2002, accessed online via Goliath online April 21, 2009. The same month saw comments by Alexander Losyukov, Russia's vice foreign minister for Asia-Pacific affairs, raising discussion on the tunnel project and saying that it was "something for the distant future, but feasible."