Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon criticized the government's plan to build housing on the site of Yongsan Park, noting that experts close to the Democratic Party of Korea — including Chung-Ang University professor Ma Kang-rae and architect Seung H-Sang, head of IROJE Architects & Planners — also oppose the idea.
"Architect Seung H-Sang and professor Ma Kang-rae have done a great deal of work for the Democratic Party side, and they were likely in a position of supporting the Democratic Party candidate in the last Seoul mayoral election, yet almost all of these figures oppose it," Oh said on the 27th while answering questions at a plenary session of the Seoul Metropolitan Council.
"At the very least, anyone with professional insight into the future spatial structure of a city — experts in urban spatial structure, in architecture, in gardens — would see the site that way, and yet of all places, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport appears to want to build apartments there," Oh said.
"If you put 10,000 or 20,000 households on the main site of Yongsan Park, Hangang-daero, Seobinggo-ro, Noksapyeong-ro and Itaewon-ro will all turn into parking lots," Oh said. "Many urban and transport experts are saying this is not a level of traffic load that can be handled."
Oh predicted that damage to Yongsan Park would grow worse over time if housing is supplied there now. "Whatever the administration, it will be hard to resist the temptation to touch this place whenever the property market becomes unstable," he said. "Once the law is changed and a bill that leaves room for it passes, from the next administration onward they will cut off pieces as needed and use them as housing sites. There would be no way to stop them even if they said they would not create a green park at all and would use the entire area as land for apartments."
Oh also predicted that construction would not begin within the current administration's term even if a decision is made to supply housing at Yongsan Park. "There will be public resistance in the process of changing the law, and the U.S. military has to relocate completely, but that timing itself is undecided at this point," he said. "Even if procedures such as detailed soil surveys, district designation, permits and groundbreaking are all pursued in parallel, construction cannot begin under this government."
