Oh Se-hoon, the Seoul mayor, visited the Sewoon redevelopment promotion district on the 4th, where controversy has been brewing over damage to the Jongmyo view, and held a meeting with residents. It was a return visit one month after an emergency on-site briefing on the rooftop garden of Sewoon Shopping Center on the 7th of last month.
The Seoul city government said on the 4th that Mayor Oh visited the Sewoon district to listen to residents' inconveniences and demands caused by a long-stalled redevelopment project. In the morning, Mayor Oh greeted merchants in the Sewoon district, then moved to the third floor of Sewoon Shopping Center to meet residents.
At the meeting, Mayor Oh emphasized, "It is clearly possible to both preserve national heritage and cultural assets and highlight their value, while developing the city in a balanced way." He said, "The center of Seoul is the Republic of Korea, and this Jongno is the heart and center of Seoul," adding, "We will no longer stand by policies of decline and stagnation instead of regeneration, and neglect instead of preservation, and will once again breathe the breath of development into Jongno."
The meeting was arranged to review the current conditions of aging areas in the Sewoon district and discuss directions for pushing ahead with the redevelopment project. Seoul Housing and Communities Corporation (SH) briefed on the project status, followed by a discussion with about 100 local residents on daily inconveniences, safety concerns, and difficulties in the project process. A resident at the meeting appealed, "Right now, land owners have lost their monthly rent income, and the interest on relocation policy loans is nearing the principal, threatening even their right to livelihood."
Mayor Oh's successive visits to the Sewoon district are seen as aimed at reaffirming the need for redevelopment and dispelling concerns about damage to views. In the Sewoon district, 97% of buildings are more than 30 years old and 57% are wooden structures, so the need for development has been raised, but progress has stalled.
In response, the Seoul city government pushed the redevelopment forward and, at the end of Oct. this year, issued a public notice of a decision (change) to the redevelopment promotion plan to ease height limits in Sewoon Zone 4. Sewoon Zone 4 faces Jongno and Cheonggye Stream, and the city drastically eased the height limit from 55 meters to 98.7 meters along Jongno, and from 71.9 meters to 141.9 meters along Cheonggye Stream. But the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Cultural Heritage Administration oppose the plan, saying that if high-rise buildings go up as planned, they will severely damage the view from Jongmyo, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The city argues that concerns about damage to the view have been overly inflated and that without raising height limits, the project would be economically unviable and it would be difficult to create green space. Through its "green ecological downtown" strategy, the city plans to secure a total of 136,000 square meters of urban green space in the Sewoon district. By creating a "north-south green axis" linking Bukaksan, Jongmyo, and Namsan, the city plans to boost downtown competitiveness and resolve safety vulnerabilities in the Sewoon district, where buildings more than 30 years old are concentrated.