South Korea

Korea

Under the Office of the Secretary's (OST) initiative, FHWA has been cooperating with the Republic of Korea's Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs (MLTMA), previously the Ministry of Construction and Transportation, in various technology exchange activities. Cooperative activities with MLTMA are focused in three areas: participation in the U.S./Korea Roads Workshop, exchange of technical experts, and establishing a training program for Korean engineers.

The U.S. Department of Transportation signed an Implementing Agreement with Korea’s MLTMA concerning cooperation in science and technology in June 1995.

The FHWA has hosted numerous Korean professionals in our offices of Infrastructure and Safety as exchange research engineers, on an 18-month assignment that focuses on areas of critical importance to both the MLTMA and FHWA. The Korean government has been very satisfied by the quality of training afforded their engineers and highly support their implementation of technologies learned in the U.S. The FHWA has as well been extremely satisfied in the wealth of technical expertise and the knowledge gained all of which has been beneficial to the U.S. transportation community as a whole.

The MLTMA implements many of the US Standards (e.g., they have translated the AASHTO Policy on Design Guidelines of Highways and Streets, as well as the FHWA Freeway Management Handbook and various SUPERPAVE booklets.)

• The MLTMA is very interested in expanding the technical expert exchanges to include researchers with the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center.
• To date the FHWA and MOCT have cooperated in ten U.S./Korea Roads Workshops. The most recent was held in Seoul, Korea in September 2008. At this tenth workshop a U.S. delegation that comprised of members from the State Department of Transportation (California), private sector and FHWA addressed topics that included construction techniques, bridge monitoring systems and the seismic retrofit programs, road safety, new technologies, disaster control in road transport, infrastructure preservation and Eco-friendly construction.
• Korea continues to be a major proponent and purchaser of US ITS technologies and this workshop affords us the opportunity to share expertise and technologies.

In light of the technology activities agreement, FHWA has also cooperated with the MLTMA in establishing the Korea Technology Transfer Center. This center is the clearinghouse of transportation-related technologies information.