The nation's highways are packed with congested traffic on Friday as South Koreans flock to their hometowns for the Chuseok holidays.

The Korea Expressway Corporation(KEC) said that as of noon, the usual four-and-a-half-hour trip from Seoul to the southern port city of Busan now takes an estimated seven and a half hours.

Driving to cities in the southwest will likely take around six and a half hours, while a trip from the capital to the central city of Daejeon should take over four hours.

The government estimates that around 30 million people will hit the road, with more than 90 percent of them taking their own vehicles during this year’s Chuseok holiday as the nation celebrates the first major holiday since all social distancing measures were lifted.

The KEC projects that Friday will see the worst traffic of the holiday period, estimating that nearly five-point-two million vehicles will traverse the nation’s major highways on Friday alone.

Special toll exemptions will be in place through next Monday, unlike the previous two years when the government collected the tolls to limit the spread of the virus.