Following Gwacheon and Yongsan, residents around Seoul's Gangnam District Office have also pushed back against the government's plan to supply dwellings. Some residents argued that building dwellings on high value-added land is an administrative inefficiency.
According to Gangnam District in Seoul on the 21st, on the 19th a protest condolence wreath opposing a plan to build public dwellings was set up in front of the Gangnam District Office. The protest was held as residents objected to the inclusion of the Gangnam District Office site in the government's recently released "Jan. 29 plan to expand downtown dwelling supply." Residents said, "This forces the unilateral sacrifice of local residents," and "We demand the immediate withdrawal of any plan to build public dwellings without resident consent."
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport released on the 29th of last month a plan to expand downtown dwelling supply and announced a plan to redevelop the aging Gangnam District Office building into a complex and supply 360 units of public dwellings. At the time, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) said it would swiftly supply about 60,000 high-quality dwellings mainly for young people and newlyweds across a total of 4.87 million square meters of prime sites in the greater Seoul area, including 32,000 units in Seoul (26 sites), 28,000 in Gyeonggi (18 sites), and 1,000 in Incheon (2 sites).
Gangnam residents are concerned that including the Gangnam District Office site in the Jan. 29 package amounts to high-density development without measures for overcrowded education and transportation. The Samseong-dong area is already a high-density residential district facing traffic congestion and a lack of education infrastructure, and they say the living environment could worsen further with a rapid rise in residential density. A resident who joined the protest said, "If high-density public dwellings go up without sufficient assessments of educational impact or transportation measures, the residential environment in the area will suffer irreparable damage."
Residents also said it is administratively inefficient to develop the Samseong-dong Gangnam District Office site—an ultra-high-priced plot exceeding about 3 billion won per 3.3 square meters (pyeong) at current market value—into public dwellings. Residents who joined the protest said, "The Gangnam District Office site is worth about 1.5 trillion won, and using it for dwellings would have the central and local governments wasting resources in the most inefficient way."
In particular, residents raised suspicions that Gangnam District, which is pushing a plan to relocate the district office from its current Samseong-dong site to the SETEC site at Hangnyeoul station and build a new complex, may have agreed to develop the current site without resident consent to enable that move. A Gangnam resident said, "Since the Jan. 29 package, Gangnam District Office has given the same boilerplate answer—'No decision has been made'—to dozens of civil complaints filed by residents," adding, "But the specific supply figure (360 units) and groundbreaking schedule released by MOLIT seem impossible without detailed coordination with the local government."
The government has rolled out a supply plan using aging government buildings and idle land to address the shortage of dwellings, but opposition has emerged not only at the Gangnam District Office site, but also at the Yongsan and Gwacheon sites included in the plan.
Yongsan residents, who held a condolence wreath protest while opposing the supply of 100,000 units of public dwellings, are preparing to hang banners in apartment complexes in the district. Recently, Mirae Doshi Yongsan Citizens' Solidarity, a residents' group opposing the expansion of public dwelling supply in the district, reportedly sent official cooperation letters to each apartment residents' council asking them to hang banners opposing the dwelling supply.
Gwacheon residents also staged a condolence wreath protest against the government's plan to transfer Seoul LetsRun Park, the country's largest racetrack in Gwacheon, and supply public dwellings. The government released a plan to transfer both the Defense Security Command site (280,000 square meters) in Gwacheon and the nearby racetrack park (1.15 million square meters), and to develop the land in an integrated way to supply 9,800 dwellings. The Emergency Committee Against the Relocation of Gwacheon Racetrack Park held a rally on the 7th and said, "Withdraw dwelling development with absolutely no resident consent."