Seoul mayor wants Yongsan to be
site of government complex
By Jim Lea, Osan bureau chief
Seoul’s mayor wants to turn the U.S. Army’s Yongsan
Garrison into a city government complex. And he wants to begin construction next year.
Mayor Koh Kun made the statement during a City Council meeting
Friday. It’s not the first time the mayor has made the suggestion.
A major problem with the proposal, however, is Yongsan isn’t on
a list of facilities to be closed under a recently announced Land Partnership Plan.
Yongsan — headquarters for the United Nations and Combined Forces Commands, U.S.
Forces Korea, and 8th Army – has been something of a political football for more than
a decade.
Seoul city and Yongsan District officials complained that the
facility, in the middle of a major route from the city’s center to eastern suburbs,
blocks city development and causes traffic congestion.
In 1990, the U.S. military agreed to move the garrison outside the
city if the South Korean government provided land and paid for the entire move.
At the time, cost of the move was estimated at more than $8 billion,
and the Korean government began searching for a new site. The site most frequently
mentioned for the relocation has been a plot of land in Pyongtaek, about 40 miles south of
the capital.
In 1992, then-presidential candidate Kim Dae-jung told Stars and
Stripes he opposed moving Yongsan out of the capital, because having the U.S. headquarters
in Seoul is a deterrent to war.
USFK returned much of the former 8th Army golf course to the Korean
government in exchange for a new course about 10 miles south of the capital. The South
Korean army also relocated its headquarters to a new “Pentagon” near Daemon, 100
miles south of Seoul. Neither move helped to reduce traffic congestion in the area,
however.
A War Memorial now stands on the former site of Korean army
headquarters, and much of the golf course land was turned into a family park. While the
Korean government was searching for a new site for the U.S. garrison, inflation caused the
cost of building a new headquarters base to escalate by several billion dollars.
The national government shelved the plan in the early 1990s.
Bee Nichol contributed to this report.
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