YONGIN, SUWON — A man in his 50s surnamed A, who lives in Gugal-dong in Yongin's Giheung District, weighs his transport options every time he arranges a night out in the Gwanggyo new town in Suwon. The distance from his home to Gwanggyo is about 9 kilometers. By car it takes just over 20 minutes, but by bus it takes more than an hour. There is a Jiseok Station on the Yongin Light Rail (EverLine) right outside his home, but transferring to the Sinbundang Line to reach Gwanggyo is actually less convenient than taking the bus. "Even with a rail station right in front of my house, it is effectively hard to use it when I go to Gwanggyo," A said.
According to reporting by The Seoul Economic Daily, Yongin is again pursuing a project to extend the Yongin Light Rail to Gwanggyojungang Station on the Sinbundang Line. Opened in 2013, the Yongin Light Rail has faced criticism that its weak connections to the wider metropolitan rail network limit ridership growth. The city also bears the burden of covering an annual operating deficit of around 30 billion won ($22 million) from its own budget.
The Gwanggyo extension would add 6.8 kilometers of track, running from Giheung Station through the Heungdeok district to Gwanggyojungang Station on the Sinbundang Line. Once completed, the line would connect directly to Gwanggyo, where major public institutions such as the Gyeonggi Provincial Government are concentrated, and would improve access to Seoul's Gangnam area via the Sinbundang Line. Yongin hopes the light rail can move beyond being a "neighborhood rail" to establish itself as one pillar of the metropolitan transport network.
Economic viability, however, is an obstacle. In a study Yongin conducted in 2020, the benefit-to-cost ratio (B/C) of the Gwanggyo extension came in at 0.79, below the 1.0 threshold generally used to judge a project economically viable. In a study by Gyeonggi Province in 2025, the B/C ratio fell further to 0.70. Sharp increases in raw material prices and construction costs following Russia's invasion of Ukraine were among the factors.
Even so, Yongin recently commissioned a "Yongin Urban Railway Network Preliminary Feasibility Study" that includes the Gwanggyo extension, because the surrounding conditions have changed. The Gwanggyo extension was reflected in the "2nd Gyeonggi Province Urban Railway Network Development Plan," and large-scale development projects that were not sufficiently factored into past economic analyses are also taking shape.
Chief among them are the advanced system semiconductor national industrial complex in the Idong and Namsa-eup area of Cheoin District and the Yongin Platform City. In this study, Yongin plans to reassess the business case by factoring in traffic demand from these development projects and changes to the Platform City development plan.
Cooperation with Suwon, which part of the route passes through, is also key. Suwon, which had been lukewarm about the Gwanggyo extension while prioritizing the Sinbundang Line extension and the Dongtan-Indeogwon Line, has taken the position that it can cooperate if economic viability is secured, prompted by the line's inclusion in the Gyeonggi Province urban railway network plan. Recently it proposed the addition of a "Yeongtong Ipgu Station" in the Suwon section as a conditional opinion. A Suwon official said, "Since the Suwon section is about 2.3 kilometers, the cost-sharing ratio and other terms need to be adjusted," adding, "We will accept what we can accept in the course of negotiations."
Yongin expects the Gwanggyo extension to become a metropolitan transport axis linking Yongin and Suwon. A Yongin official said, "Yongin and Suwon are each special cities with populations exceeding 1 million and are representative cities of southern Gyeonggi," adding, "The Gwanggyo extension project will open a new chapter for the future of the two cities."
