en.Wedoany.com Reported - On April 16, 2026, the governments of Gyeongsangbuk-do Province, Daegu Metropolitan City, and Jeollabuk-do Special Self-Governing Province held a meeting at the Seongju-gun Office to discuss the "Muju-Seongju-Daegu Expressway Construction Project" pre-feasibility study. Attendees included representatives from Jeollabuk-do and Daegu City, expressway construction project managers from five cities and counties including Muju and Seongju, and officials from the Korea Expressway Corporation.

This project is part of the unopened section of the East-West Trunk Expressway, which connects Saemangeum in Jeollabuk-do to Pohang in Gyeongsangbuk-do. Since the establishment of the national arterial road network in 1992, the Daegu-Pohang section of the East-West Trunk Expressway opened in 2004, the Jeonju-Muju section in 2007, and the Saemangeum-Jeonju section in 2025. The Muju-Seongju-Daegu section has been proposed three times since 1999 but has repeatedly failed to be selected for pre-feasibility studies due to insufficient economic viability.

At the meeting, Gyeongsangbuk-do requested cooperation from local governments in promoting services to support the metropolitan-level pre-feasibility study, adopting a joint proposal for project advancement, planning joint local government activities, promoting a signature campaign for the project, and hosting a National Assembly policy forum. To address the shortcomings in the economic analysis, it was decided to concentrate administrative efforts on building a logical case emphasizing the line's impact on balanced national development and its role as a core axis for the symbiotic development of the Yeongnam and Honam regions. By identifying additional traffic demand and jointly improving the regional backwardness score, Gyeongsangbuk-do and Jeollabuk-do successfully secured the "Selection of Pre-Feasibility Study Target Project" in October 2025.

The Korea Development Institute (KDI) began the pre-feasibility study for this expressway section in January 2026. Park Jong-tae, Director of the Construction and Urban Bureau of Gyeongsangbuk-do, stated, "We will strive to deliver the good news of the expressway pre-feasibility study's approval and its early construction to our citizens and provincial residents."

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