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Scenic rural area tipped as future ROK capital
(Agenices)
Updated: 2004-07-06 01:18
Rural Yongi County in the central Republic of Korea (ROK) was tapped Monday
as the likely future seat of government under a controversial US$45 billion plan
to move the country's capital away from crowded Seoul.
President Roh Moo-hyun made relocating the capital to relieve congestion and
ease regional rivalries a key pledge in his election campaign. The project --
set to begin in 2007 and be completed in 2030 -- was approved by parliament last
year.
An aerial shot
taken on Friday shows part of Yongi, which was given the highest marks
among four future capital candidate sites.
[Reuters] |
Officials from Seoul, a city of
10.3 million people which has been a Korean capital since the 14th century, have
criticized the plan as wasteful and ill-considered.
Last week, more than 10,000 people gathered at City Hall to protest the
relocation.
In Yongi, a lush land of rice paddies and low-lying hills about 80 kilometres
southeast of Seoul, the county's highest official hailed the decision as "a
great project of a thousand years -- not only for Yongi but for the country."
But county chief Lee Ki-bong said he still has to reassure the area's 85,000
people, who fear their rural lifestyle will be lost and resent "that strangers
are in their backyards taking pictures, pointing this way and that."
"The plan means a lot of people have to leave the land they have become
attached to, where they have lived on the land," he said. "They are worried,"
said Lee, who pledged to work with the government to find jobs for those
displaced.
Yongi and adjacent counties of nearby Kongju, an ancient capital, won the
highest marks among four candidates evaluated by the Presidential Committee on
Administrative Capital Relocation.
The committee said Yongi's topography and access to highways, an airport and
high-speed railways were favourable for a new seat for the administrative and
legislative branches of government.
Roh and other proponents say moving the capital, a plan hatched in the 1960s,
will ease Seoul's horrendous traffic and high housing costs and reduce its
stranglehold on the economy.
Seoul means 'capital'
Seoul -- which means "capital" in Korean -- is also the cultural,
educational, business and financial capital of the ROK, a country the size of
Belgium or Pennsylvania with a population of 48 million people.
"About 47 per cent of Korea's population live on less than 12 per cent of our
territory," said Park Byeong-seog, a lawmaker from the ruling Uri Party. "We
cannot develop our economy or upgrade our living standard with that deformity,"
he said.
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