President Lee Jae-myung has pledged to end the six-decade monopoly on the Namsan cable car, but the incumbent operator looks increasingly likely to keep its business rights even at the first relicensing review. A new relicensing system was created to break up the long-running monopoly, yet delays in securing a transport service to replace the cable car could leave the Seoul Metropolitan Government with little room to turn the operator down. Critics say the government's promise to "normalize" the monopoly may lose much of its force because the rules changed without the conditions needed to back them up.
Korea Cableway Industry, which operates the Namsan cable car, must obtain relicensing from the Seoul city government by September 2028, according to reporting by The Seoul Economic Daily on the 6th. The revised Track Transport Act, which took effect on Sept. 18, caps track business licenses at 20 years and requires operators that have run services for more than 20 years to secure relicensing within two years of the law's effective date.
Korea Cableway Industry won its business license in 1961 and has effectively operated the Namsan cable car as a monopoly since 1962. The company has posted operating profit in the billions of won each year in recent years, and the fact that a single operator has held the rights for more than 60 years has fueled a long-running controversy over preferential treatment.
The long-term monopoly has drawn repeated criticism from the president and his office. Referring to the Namsan cable car at a Cabinet meeting last December, Lee said, "Why does one particular individual get to enjoy all those privileges there for decades?" Kang Hoon-sik, chief of the Presidential Secretariat, also pointed to the monopolistic business structure that has lasted more than 60 years and called for reforms, including setting an expiration date on licenses.
The resulting relicensing system changes a structure under which a licensed operator could run its business indefinitely, requiring instead that the appropriateness of the business be reassessed at set intervals. Operators must submit a business plan, safety inspection results and a safety management plan during the relicensing process. The local government with jurisdiction reviews safety, the adequacy of the business plan and whether the business serves environmental conservation and the public interest before deciding whether to grant relicensing and for how long.
The start of relicensing does not automatically end the incumbent's operating rights. An operator that passes the review can continue running the business for up to 20 more years. For the Namsan cable car, the Seoul city government decides on relicensing.
The key question is whether a transport service to replace the existing cable car can be secured before the first relicensing decision. The Namsan cable car currently runs two 48-passenger cabins and carries about 1.7 million passengers a year. Halting cable car service without sufficient alternatives in place would inevitably disrupt travel for residents and tourists visiting Namsan.
A gondola, pursued as the leading alternative, has been at a standstill since October 2024 because of litigation brought by Korea Cableway Industry and others. The company and other plaintiffs filed suit seeking to overturn the Seoul city government's urban management plan decision allowing the gondola, and construction stopped after the court granted their request for an injunction. The city lost at the trial court last December and lost again on appeal on Sept. 17.
Separately from the litigation, the city has pushed to resume construction by revising the enforcement decree of the Park and Green Space Act. The current decree limits the height of structures that may be built in urban natural park zones to 12 meters as a general rule. The city believes that if the limit is eased under certain conditions, gondola support towers could be installed without a separate change to urban planning facilities, allowing construction to restart.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport gave public notice last year of a proposed decree revision easing that height limit. But no follow-up steps were taken for more than a year after the notice period ended. The ministry says opinions were sharply divided at the time and that, given how much time has passed, restarting the revision would require going through the entire process again, including a fresh public notice.
"More than a year has passed since the public notice ended, and opinions were sharply split at the time," a ministry official said. "Pursuing the revision would mean going through the procedures again, including the public notice, so it is difficult to move ahead immediately."
The problem is that the timetables for cable car relicensing and for securing an alternative service have become reversed. The city expects that even if gondola construction resumed immediately, the remaining work and test runs would push the start of regular service to the first half of 2029 — after September 2028, the deadline for Korea Cableway Industry's relicensing.
Under the current schedule, the city is likely to review Korea Cableway Industry's relicensing without a sufficient alternative transport service in place. "If Korea Cableway Industry applies for relicensing with no gondola in place, it would realistically be difficult not to grant it, barring serious problems with safety or operations," a city official said.
On Sept. 17, after the relicensing system was created through revisions to the Track Transport Act and its subordinate rules, Lee said, "A cable car that specific families and a company have monopolized as a privilege for decades is finally being normalized." Yet critics say that although the institutional machinery to re-examine a long-term operator is now in place, delays in securing a replacement service could narrow the local government's options from the very first relicensing review.
"Even with a relicensing system, local governments have limited options if there is no alternative means of transport," a transport policy expert said. "Fixing a long-term monopoly structure requires reaching a conclusion quickly on the regulatory issues surrounding a replacement service as well."
