Traction technologies for railways in Korea

Based on the development of the recent big capacity semi-conductor and the change of a control system of a railroad vehicle has been changed many control methods and the system of a railway vehicle has been also studied toward the direction of light weight and high speed. Recently, due to rising the interesting about clean energy, the railway in Korea is replaced by electric railway. And research about the traction system for electric railways is also proceeding very actively. Railways in Korea is developing the high speed train for the mass transportation system and unmanned light weight vehicle for transit inside of the city. In this paper, the history and traction systems for the railways in Korea will be introduced. The structure and basic operation of the each traction systems will be explained. And it will be discussed that the future technology of the traction systems and the railway vehicle in Korea.