Ground has been broken for construction of a large-scale space radio observatory network at a university in southeastern Ulsan city.

The Korea VLBI Network project, sponsored by the Korea Astronomy Observatory (KAO) seeks to assemble three radio telescopes in Seoul, Ulsan the southermost island of Jeju to form a 500 km-wide, huge interferometry network.

The project is scheduled for completion in 2007.

The radio telescopes will have the capacity to distinguish a grain of rice from hundreds of kilometers away.

A KAO official said the network would contribute greatly to research on astrology and geological activities in the Korean peninsula.