South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport held an international webinar Thursday to actively promote Gangwon Province’s Gangneung as a candidate city for the 2025 ITS World Congress.

The ITS World Congress, dubbed the “Transportation Olympics,” is the world’s largest exhibition and academic conference in the field of intelligent transport systems that began in Paris, France in 1994 and is held annually in Asia, the Americas and Europe.

Intelligent transport systems refer to functional transportation systems that combine electronic, information, communication and control technologies into the transportation system, and aims to create a next-generation transportation system that is fast, safe and comfortable.

The ministry selected Gangneung as a candidate city to host the 2025 ITS World Congress. Outside Korea, Taiwan has applied for its capital Taipei as a candidate site to compete with Gangneung.

The international webinar to host the Gangneung ITS World Congress was attended by the Transportation Ministry, the city of Gangneung and members of the Asia-Pacific Board of Directors, who have the right to vote for the host city. They include China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Gangneung was previously part of the successful bid for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. In the case of the 2022 World Choir Games, which have been confirmed for Gangneung, the number of participants is 10 times higher than that of the PyeongChang Winter Games, with the number of competitors alone reported at 25,000.

Korea previously held the 5th Seoul ITS World Congress in 1998 and the 17th Busan ITS World Congress in 2010.

By Shin Ji-hye (shinjh@heraldcorp.com)