There are 1527 sycamore
trees along 4.4 km of road from Seoul-Pusan Highway Cheongju
Interchange, which is the entrance to Cheongju, to Jookchun
Bridge in Kakyung-dong. Although it is a 4 lane paved road,
this road used to be unpaved gravel road on which farmers
drove their wagons. Sycamore trees were planted in 1952 as a
part of afforestation scheme driven by the Korean government.
People living in Dong-ri and chief of Kangsuh-myun planted
1600 sycamore saplings along the road.
Now those trees
grew up well to make the Cheongju entrance road to be the best
road in the nation. However, when the road was selected as the
entrance road to Cheongju from the Seoul-Pusan Highway, there
was on order by the government to cut off all the trees to
make the road wider. All the 18-year-old trees could have been
cut off but somebody came up with an idea to save the trees;
they decided to use trees on one side to be the road separator
for 4-lane highway. Providing beautiful scenery to people
every season, the tunnel like avenue lined with trees is the
symbol of Cheongju.
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Tunnel Like Avenue Lined
with Trees on Both Sides
;)
