These days, most people heading to Seoul's Yongsan district are bound for the National Museum of Korea or an IMAX theater. On weekends and holidays, long lines of cars form on the roads into the museum, and visitors race to the ticket office the moment it opens. A month has passed since the release of a film shot with IMAX cameras, yet the dedicated theater at Yongsan Station is still packed. Another Yongsan destination that Seoul residents have come to favor is the Children's Garden. When I visited it for the first time early this month, dozens of funeral wreaths were lined up in front of the main gate — sent by citizens protesting the government's plan to build housing there.
It has been a month since the government formalized its plan to supply housing on the main site of Yongsan Park, including the Children's Garden. After the Seoul Metropolitan Government pushed back, Land, Infrastructure and Transport Minister Kim Yoon-duck met Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon twice to look for a solution, but the two sides found no common ground. Even if they meet again, they appear likely to keep talking past each other. Their positions on building homes on the park's main site are sharply divided.
The government's position is that it should at least be possible to build a limited number of homes for young adults and newlyweds on parts of the main park site that have already been damaged. The Seoul city government, by contrast, holds to the principle that it cannot agree to convert even a portion of the land to residential use, because Yongsan Park is a space for the lives and leisure of Seoul residents and a key part of the green corridor running from Namsan to the Han River. With buildable land in Seoul limited, the government's difficult position — using even part of the park site to increase supply and stabilize home prices — is understandable, and so is the local government's principle that land hard won back from the U.S. military should provide ample green space for citizens.
Seoul residents are divided as well. One side argues that the park site, where foreign troops were stationed after the Imo Incident of 1882, should be developed entirely as a park given its history, symbolism and the interests of future generations. The other holds that rather than turning the roughly 3 million square meters into parkland in its entirety, some of it should be used for housing, with minimal damage to green space, to ease the shortage of homes in the city center. The two positions are so sharply opposed that finding a middle ground is not easy.
I do not believe that carrying out the Yongsan Park development exactly as originally planned is the only answer. The plan to have the U.S. military base returned and to create Yongsan Park, which began in the 1990s, was built on years of debate and social consensus. But when circumstances and conditions change, revising and amending existing plans should also be possible. The Special Act on the Creation of Yongsan Park, enacted in 2007, is surely not so sacred that not a single line can be touched. That said, pushing changes through hastily to solve an immediate real estate problem is not desirable either. Even if expanding housing supply is necessary, flipping existing plans overnight without sufficient social discussion will struggle to win support.
Along with Seoul's three Gangnam-area districts — Gangnam, Seocho and Songpa — Yongsan ranks in the top 20% of the city by home prices. It offers easy commutes to Gwanghwamun, Yeouido and Gangnam, and green and waterfront areas such as Namsan and the Han River are nearby, making it highly sought after as a place to live. Once Yongsan Park — billed as Korea's answer to Central Park — is created, the Yongsan International Business District is developed, and redevelopment of aging residential areas such as Hannam New Town and the Seogye and Cheongpa neighborhoods is completed, the area will become "Seoul's Manhattan," combining housing, offices and green space. With so many development projects concentrated there, roads, schools and other urban infrastructure must be expanded to handle a growing population. The task is not simply to create a park and supply housing, but to redraw the urban plan itself from scratch.
Now that the debate has surfaced, why not have the central government and the Seoul city government open a public forum on how Yongsan Park should be developed? Through it, I hope they find a way to develop the main site and the adjacent land more effectively and coherently. They also need to draw up and pursue a new master plan linking Yongsan Park and the Yongsan International Business District — with the goal of holding a groundbreaking ceremony for Yongsan National Park in 2032, the 150th anniversary of the Imo Incident, with the whole nation watching.
