ABSTRACT
At their historic summit meeting in Pyongyang in June 2000, the leaders of the two Koreas reached an agreement to reconnect the trunk railway running through the demilitarized zone (DMZ) for the first time in half a century. On September 18, 2002, reconstruction was started simultaneously in the South and North Korean sectors. The date was auspicious: It coincided with the seventy-first anniversary of the Manchurian Incident, the beginning of Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, which also changed the fate of colonial Korea. By early December, the de-mining of the two corridors, western and eastern, as well as track laying had been almost completed. The South Korean government reportedly set up a committee to look into the possibility of building an underwater tunnel under the Korean Strait, so that Japan would be linked with the continent for the first time. The idea of a transKorean railway based on a reintegrated and expanded railway network on the peninsula, in the meantime, has given rise to the vision of an “Iron Silk Road,” which would link the entire Eurasian landmass together by a major railway network. In this sense, although Korea is now an economic powerhouse in its own right, the Korean peninsula will again serve its historic role as a land bridge-except this time, not just for the Northeast Asian region, but for a reconnected Eurasia in the age of the global economy.1
