SEOUL
WATCH
A capital idea to move the capital?
By Aidan Foster-Carter
Your starter for 10. What does South Korea's president, Roh Moo-hyun, regard as
"the most important task facing the nation" at this juncture?
He has plenty to choose from. De-fanging North Korea, of nukes and more, surely
tops anyone's list. Or relatedly, handling increasingly tetchy ties with the
United States - whose new plan to withdraw one-third of its 37,000 troops from
the peninsula by end-2005 means Roh's avowed quest for a more independent
defense stance had better get into gear, fast.
Then there's the economy. How to get consumers spending again, after being
burned in the recent credit card debt crunch? Or
longer-term (but the clock is ticking): How to beat off Chinese competition and
make the tough leap into services and top-end manufacture?
All these are weighty tasks. More than enough, you might think, to keep South
Korea's newly restored leader occupied for the four more years in office,which
the Constitutional Court's rejection in May of an opposition impeachment motion
has vouchsafed to him.
But Roh Moo-hyun has other priorities. For him, "the most important task facing
the nation is to ensure regional uniformity through decentralization." Forget
Kim Jong-il; never mind the economy. The real problem is Seoul. It's gotten way
too big for its boots.
A political outsider who plays up his provincial underdog roots, Roh Moo-hyun
wants a more equal South Korea: be it socially, or between regions. To this
end, he plans to move the capital, no less. By 2012, the whole government - the
Blue House, national assembly, supreme court, all ministries, and more - is to
relocate to a new site, some 100 kilometers further south. Four towns in the
Chungchong region are vying to become the new Seoul.
Moving the capital could cost $100 billion
This won't come cheap. Roh's airy first figure of US$4 billion, when he
campaigned for this shift in 2002, has since ballooned 10-fold - officially.
Independent critics reckon the real bill could top $100 billion. No one really
knows: with no site yet, there are no blueprints.
Nor have there been any public hearings or consultation exercises for so vast a
change. In his campaign Roh pledged a referendum - but is now backtracking,
saying parliamentary approval suffices. That came last December, when the
opposition Grand National Party (GNP), which then controlled the assembly,
backed the bill - pressed, it now admits, by its Chungchong legislators, who
feared losing their seats if the party opposed it. In the event, Chungchong
votes were crucial in Roh's narrow win. (Is that smell pork-barrel?)
True, Seoul has long been likened to a vortex relentlessly sucking resources to
the center. Greater Seoul, including Kyonggi province and Inchon port, is home
to 40% of South Korea's 48 million people. But as this sprawl spreads, one fear
is that Chungchong is too close - and would merely become the southern tip of a
vast lozenge-shaped megalopolis.
At least four questions arise. One is how shifting the capital meshes with
other policies. The slogan of making Korea east Asia's business hub is hard to
pin down, but its major manifestation so far - New Songdo City, a planned $190
billion regeneration project near Inchon - involves heading west, not south.
Nearby Inchon International Airport is already a long haul from downtown Seoul;
it would be a whole lot further from Chungchong.
Second, can South Korea really afford this? Surging growth and fiscal
discipline have left public finances healthy - for now. But many calls on the
exchequer loom: $103 billion to compensate farmers for market opening; $21
billion extra on defense in the next decade, to make up for the US force
drawdown; a pension system that will go bust without more infusions; and above
all, the trillion-dollar question of eventual Korean reunification.
More sense to move the capital north for reunification
Whereby hangs a third objection. Seoul's mayor, Lee Myung Bak - a potential GNP
presidential contender in 2007, not too late to scrap the move - is clearly no
neutral. Yet it's hard to disagree when he notes that, come unification - "not
so far away", in his view - a capital south from Seoul would be politically
absurd. If anything, since the northern economy will need boosting, it makes
more sense to build a new capital in the old north.
All this apart, Roh's stated motive is itself misconceived. "Uniformity," as a
professed goal, is as depressing as it is utopian - so last century, so Korean.
All development is unequal, but South Korea's (like Taiwan's) has in fact been
much more egalitarian than most. Yet that proven fact cuts little ice with
Koreans; many itch to hammer any nail that sticks out. Inequality, comrade?
Look at China, India, Brazil, the US - or North Korea, whose regions really are
ripped off so a small elite can lord it in a Potemkin Pyongyang.
Vox populi? Public opinion is predictably split. Chungchong is keen
(surprise!), while Seoul, Kyonggi and Inchon are all lobbying hard against the
move. Nationwide, pros and cons each have around 40% support - but 70% there
should be a referendum first.
Despite denying one now, a referendum may be Roh Moo-hHyun's best way forward -
or way out. (Last year, months after taking office, he called one on his own
stewardship; this would have been unconstitutional, and it was dropped.)
Otherwise, his not-so-capital idea threatens to become yet another long-running
bone of contention in an already divided society - and a big distraction from
South Korea's real security and economic challenges.
Aidan Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in sociology and
modern Korea, Leeds University, England.
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