Korea to invest over $180 million in WIG design

An artist's impression of a large WIG ship, or Wing in Ground ship.
/courtesy of the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute.

This Korean newspaper tells us of Koreas plan to invest over $180 million in Wing-In-Ground aircraft to be used as a commercial transportation solution:

The 20-seat WIG ship proposed by the government would be
77 m long, 65 m wide and weigh 300 tons. It would travel at speeds of
250 to 300 km/h, similar to the KTX train, and carry a loads of around
100 tons, as much as Boeing 747 can carry.

The government plans to spend W170 billion to develop the ship over
five years, aiming for test runs in 2011 and commercial operations from
2012. The vessel would be used as a passenger ship, freighter or
military craft.

Traveling three or four times faster than normal ships, a WIG ship
exploits aerodynamic forces to skim just one to five meters above the
water. Read More…

We reviewed WIG aircraft in this previous post and can only wonder if this is an emerging trend.

Found via gCaptain's Maritime News Discoverer.