A new road connection across Ganggu in Yeongdeok County is set to open at 10 a.m. on September 22, giving drivers another route through an area that regularly clogs on weekends and during the snow-crab season. The Ganggu sea bridge links Ganggu 4-ri and Samsa-ri and is intended to spread traffic that has relied heavily on the existing coastal road and National Route 7.
The project runs for 1.5 kilometers and was built as a two-lane road 13 meters wide. North Gyeongsang Province began construction in November 2021 and spent about 51.6 billion won over four years and ten months. With the bridge added to the local road network, Yeongdeok expects visitors and residents to have more ways to move around the Ganggu waterfront rather than funneling through the same approaches.
A second route through a seasonal bottleneck
The timing matters because Ganggu is one of Yeongdeok's best-known tourism areas and experiences recurring congestion when visitor numbers rise. The new bridge does not eliminate traffic demand, but it changes the geometry of the local network by creating an additional crossing between communities on opposite sides of the water. That can reduce pressure on bottlenecks when the coastal road and Route 7 are busiest.
For travelers, the change is immediate from September 22: navigation services and local road signs should begin routing traffic across a connection that did not previously exist. Its effect will become clearer during the next heavy weekend and the winter crab season, when the area has historically faced its most persistent traffic jams.