The Ministry of Construction and Transportation announced Wednesday the completion of an 11-year-old project developing a bullet train with domestic technology.
The 250 billion won project was designed to develop the country's own technology for high-speed transportation so that the railway industry can be improved.
The current KTX adopted French technology.
Since the start of the project in 1996, the train took the first pilot operation in 2002, and recorded a highest speed of 352.4 kilometers per hour, in December 2004. It has had 200,000 kilometers of test runs without a single accident.
``Korea now has its own bullet train designing and producing technology, which only France, Japan and Germany have had so far,'' a ministry official said.
The new high-speed train will be put into full operation here in 2009. The government plans to bid for Turkey and Brazil's bullet train tenders in 2008.