This article appeared on Signal, the capital markets service, on August 25, 2026, at 11:41.
A growing number of companies are choosing the area around Seoul Station as a long-term headquarters base. This year, LG Household & Health Care (051900.KS) relocated its head office from Gwanghwamun, while CJ Olive Young bought a building it had been leasing near Seoul Station and converted it into an owner-occupied headquarters. Meritz Fire & Marine Insurance has won approval of its project implementation plan for the Bongnae District 2 site, where it is pursuing a second office building. Analysts say the Seoul Station area, long short on office space relative to its transit infrastructure, is emerging as a new hub within the downtown business district.
According to industry sources on the 25th, CJ Olive Young purchased the former KDB Life Tower in Dongja-dong near Seoul Station for 674.4 billion won ($485 million) last year. The building spans nine basement floors and 30 above-ground floors, with a total floor area of about 82,000 square meters. The company had leased several floors of the building as its headquarters since 2021 before buying it and shifting from a leased headquarters to an owner-occupied one. In May this year, it began replacing the building's exterior signage with its corporate logo and reportedly uses 16 above-ground floors as office space.
LG Household & Health Care ended 15 years in Gwanghwamun this year and moved its headquarters to the LG Seoul Station Building nearby. LG acquired the building, formerly the STX Namsan Tower, in 2016 and has used it as an office for its affiliates. The purchase price at the time was reported at about 300 billion won.
Genesis BBQ Group sequentially purchased five land parcels totaling about 990 square meters in the Namdaemun-ro 5-ga area starting in August 2024. The company said the purchases were for building a new headquarters. BBQ's head office has been in Munjeong-dong, Songpa District, since 2002. In June this year, asbestos removal work was carried out during demolition at 17-1 Namdaemun-ro 5-ga, a project ordered by BBQ.
Meritz Fire & Marine Insurance moved key departments to its new office in Bongnae-dong District 1 in central Seoul's Jung District in 2024, and is now pursuing a second office building in the adjacent Bongnae District 2. Its project implementation plan was announced early this month, and the site will house an office facility with eight basement floors and 31 above-ground floors and a total floor area of about 62,000 square meters. In the Seoul Station North Station-area complex development led by Hanwha Group, part of an office building is also reportedly being considered for use as a group headquarters.
Seoul Station's locational strength lies in its wide-area transit network. It is a hub where the KTX, the Airport Railroad, subway lines 1 and 4, and the Gyeongui-Jungang Line converge. With the opening of the Unjeong Jungang–Seoul Station section of the Great Train Express (GTX)-A line in late 2024, the northwestern part of the greater Seoul area was connected within about 20 minutes, and access toward Dongtan will improve once the Seoul Station–Suseo section is linked.
LX Hausys cited transit as the reason it moved to its current office at Seoul Station in 2019, relocating to a central transit hub to improve access to its plants in Ulsan and Cheongju and to sales offices nationwide. Hyundai Capital also opened its "Seoul Station era" in 2022 by moving its head office from Yeouido to the Grand Central building near Seoul Station, and Daehong Communications integrated its offices early this year by moving its subsidiary Spoon into its headquarters at the Yonsei Severance Building.
Until now, the supply of large new office buildings in the Seoul Station area has been limited. Large office facilities such as Seoul Square, the LG Seoul Station Building and Grand Central were already in place, but there were few options to absorb new demand from relocating large organizations. The prevailing view is that while the transit conditions have been in place for a long time, the supply of new office space has failed to keep pace.
Recently, however, alongside companies establishing headquarters bases, large office developments and institutional capital have continued to flow in. In the Sunhwa-dong and Seosomun-dong areas north of Seoul Station, several supersized office projects are under way at once. The Seoul Station–Seodaemun District 1-2 Zone 1 project on the former Samsung Life Seosomun Building site has a total floor area of about 249,000 square meters, targets completion in June 2030, and will include a 1,100-seat classical music concert hall on its lower floors. The nearby Seosomun District Zones 11 and 12 (about 138,000 square meters) are slated for completion in 2029. In Bongnae District 3, a real estate investment trust involving SK D&D is also pursuing an office development.
The North Station-area complex development led by Hanwha will be built on idle railway land in Bongnae-dong 2-ga north of Seoul Station, spanning about 337,000 square meters of total floor area across five buildings with six basement floors and 39 above-ground floors. Construction began in November 2024, with completion targeted for the first half of 2029. The global hotel brand Mandarin Oriental has chosen the site for its first entry into Korea and is preparing to open in 2030.
Movement in capital markets is also pronounced. Korea Investment Real Asset Management, an affiliate of Korea Investment Holdings, acquired Seoul Square, the landmark office building in front of Seoul Station, for 1.28 trillion won ($920 million) in March this year. The office development in Zones 11 and 12 of the Yangdong district at Namdaemun-ro 5-ga recently completed 500 billion won in main project financing (PF). The building will have 10 basement floors and 32 above-ground floors, with KCC Construction as the contractor.
Completion dates for the Seoul Station projects are concentrated between 2029 and the early 2030s. The North Station-area project is set for 2029, the Seosomun District for 2029, and the Seoul Station–Seodaemun Zone 1 for 2030. IOTA Seoul, an integrated development by IGIS Asset Management of the former Millennium Hilton Seoul site along with the Metro Tower and Seoullo Tower sites (about 460,000 square meters of total floor area), is the largest project in the area, targeting completion in the first half of 2032.
Savills Korea forecast that 26 prime-grade office buildings, with a total floor area of about 2.56 million square meters, will be supplied in the downtown area between 2026 and 2032. Of that, the Seoul Station–Namdaemun area accounts for about 29%. The Seun–Euljiro–City Hall area accounts for 53%, and the Jongno–Gwanghwamun area for 18%.
In the Seoul Station area, large new office buildings have been a limited option. Companies have secured their headquarters bases by leasing or directly buying existing buildings, or by using offices held by their groups. From 2029, a large wave of new office towers is expected to widen those options. Because a major headquarters relocation takes several years — from reviewing candidate sites to signing contracts, incorporating designs and moving in — observers say companies are likely to have already begun studying these assets.
A real estate industry official said, "The Seoul Station area already has the hardware of transit, but it has lacked the office space to match." The official added, "Whether by buying, relocating or building anew, the fact that companies are starting to choose this area as a long-term base shows the nature of the change."
