More than 34 million Koreans are expected to travel to their home towns during the three-day Chuseok holiday
© AFP Won Dai-Yeon

SEOUL (AFP) - Traffic authorities said 34 million people would hit the road during the three-day Chuseok holiday ending Monday and more than 350,000 vehicles were expected to leave Seoul before the end of Friday.

Many passengers pack bottled water and portable toilets for the annual exodus which effectively turns some stretches of highway into giant car parks.

But higher fuel prices and the shorter holiday, which straddles a normal weekend this year, are expected to keep more drivers than normal off the roads.

Signs of lean times are unmistakable, with merchants, discount shops and travel agencies reporting slow business.

"I've sold only about half of what I did last year," Kim Sung-Hee, a fruit seller at Seoul's Namdaemun Market, told AFP. "There are so few customers and it seems there are more vendors than buyers here."

Tour agencies specialising in overseas trips are feeling the effect of the economic downturn and the short holiday.

Hana Tour said customers bookings foreign tours had more than halved to 10,000 this year from 23,000 a year earlier.

"This is mainly because of the economic downturn and additional charges for higher aviation fuel prices," a spokeswoman said, adding airlines collect 186 dollars in extra charges on a round-trip ticket to Southeast Asia.

Families traditionally get together, prepare special food to thank their ancestors for the harvest and visit ancestral graves during Chuseok, one of the country's two major holidays along with Lunar New Year.

©AFP