Yongsan Park, between prime real estate and the city's lungs - 경향신문

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At Yongsan Children's Garden in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, identified by the government as a major housing supply site, citizens take a walk on the 23rd. Jeong Hyo-jin

Should we create a place to live, or should we leave a place to breathe. Recently, Yongsan Park in Seoul has become a hot-button issue. This is because the government, which is pushing to supply housing within Yongsan Park, and the Seoul Metropolitan Government, which argues the park should be preserved as green space, are locked in a standoff. Today in Dot-Line-Plane, we examine the differences over Yongsan Park and consider what development or preservation would mean.

Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Kim Yun-deok and Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon met on the 20th to discuss plans to supply housing in Yongsan Park, but the talks ended with both sides on parallel tracks. The government argues for a limited supply of housing only on certain parcels within Yongsan Park that have lost their green-space function, whereas the city maintains that the entire park must be preserved. They agreed to meet again this week to continue the discussions.

The battle lines over supplying housing inside Yongsan Park have widened to the party-government-presidential office, which is pushing development (the ruling Democratic Party, the government, and the presidential office), versus the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the opposition, which oppose it. Representative Kim Young-bae, head of the Democratic Party's Seoul chapter, met with Mayor Oh on the 22nd, but it ended with the result that “it was difficult to reach an agreement in broad terms” (Rep. Kim).

Let us look more closely at each side's position. The government proposed supplying housing on a limited basis, specifically housing for young people and newlyweds, only on certain parcels within Yongsan Park that have lost their green-space function. Candidate sites under review include Officers' Housing Complex 5 within the park, the former Defense Acquisition Program Administration site, and military apartments.

For a government that sees resolving the greater Seoul housing shortage as an urgent priority, Yongsan Park, in the heart of central Seoul, is an attractive card. The idea is not to leave prime land only as a park, but to make good use of it. Moreover, as state-owned land, Yongsan Park is ‘empty land’, so no separate land-compensation procedures are required.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government is firmly opposed, to the extent that Mayor Oh called it “to agree (to development) would be to go down in history as sinners”. He emphasized that Yongsan Park is directly tied to the quality of life of Seoul residents and that it forms a major part of the green axis connecting Namsan to the Han River.

However, the city offered a compromise of developing nearby parcels such as Camp Kim and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs parking lot instead of the main tract of Yongsan Park. Analyses suggest that, depending on whether the core area is used, the amount of housing supplied could differ by roughly a factor of three, making it even harder for the government and the city to find common ground.

There are also practical challenges to resolve before supplying housing on the Yongsan Park site. Used for a long time as a U.S. military base, Yongsan Park suffers serious soil contamination from heavy metals and oil. To use it for housing, the polluted soil must be remediated, and how long that will take is uncertain. The issues of cost sharing and responsibility with the U.S. military must also be negotiated.

Debate over how to use Yongsan Park goes back about 20 years. The Roh Moo-hyun administration enacted the Special Act on the Creation of Yongsan Park in 2007. The law states that ‘the state shall in principle develop the entire main site as Yongsan Park, and shall not change the use of the main site for non-park purposes or dispose of it by sale, etc.’ The social commitment to leave Yongsan Park intact as green space has long been protected by law.

Because of this historical context, the People Power Party is invoking ‘the Roh Moo-hyun spirit’ to go on the offensive against the ruling party. The Democratic Party counters that “at the time, turning the entire site into a park was a national consensus, but the housing reality and demand for housing in Seoul have changed greatly” (Floor Leader Han Byung-do).

The way the ruling and opposition parties are fighting over how to use Yongsan Park also feels unfamiliar. In the past, parties in the Democratic camp typically put more weight on conserving green space, while parties in the People Power Party lineage tended to emphasize development. In fact, when the Lee Myung-bak administration announced it would supply public housing and lifted large swaths of the green belt, the Grand National Party (predecessor of the People Power Party) supported it and the United Democratic Party (predecessor of the Democratic Party) opposed it.

The Seoripul District case from about two years ago has also been brought up. When the Democratic Party argued that Mayor Oh had agreed to lift the Seoripul green belt under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration but is now throwing up obstacles, the city countered that it was a matter being reviewed only on a limited basis for already degraded areas. Some analyses suggest that, by sharpening his attacks on the ruling bloc through the Yongsan Park fight, Mayor Oh may be enhancing his own political profile.

In the end, only political wrangling remains yet again. The essencesupplying housing and conserving green spacerecedes, while the tug-of-war continues. Meanwhile, young people struggling with the housing crunch were left to give a hollow laugh at the ‘abandoned-bus house’ and, now, at a proposed revision ‘allowing bathtubs in gosiwon’.

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