The Yongsan International Business District urban development project in Seoul is adrift. With the city and the central government failing to narrow differences over the scale of dwellings supply, the land sale planned for this year is inevitably facing setbacks. Within the ruling bloc, a push has emerged to scrap the private sale method entirely and switch to a public development involving the National Pension Service.
According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government on the 22nd, KORAIL and the Seoul Housing and Urban Development Corporation (SH), the project operators, had planned to sell three to five of the 18 parcels in the Yongsan International Business District this year, but they have not proceeded with the land sale because the serviced land supply plan has not been issued.
A serviced land supply plan, under the Urban Development Act, is a plan established when a project operator sells land and includes details such as the use, area, and price of the land to be supplied, as well as eligibility requirements and selection methods for recipients. The supply plan must be approved by the city or provincial governor, and construction can begin only after going through procedures such as establishing supply guidelines → public notice → operator selection → contract. At a meeting of the Seoul Metropolitan Council's Housing and Space Committee on the 3rd, Kim Yong-hak, Seoul's director of future space planning, was asked whether the city was at the stage of contacting an enterprise interested in purchasing the land and said, "We are at the stage of organizing the supply guidelines, but it is difficult because of the number of dwellings to be supplied."
The Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport remain far apart over the scale of dwellings supply. The city drafted a plan to supply 6,000 units in the Yongsan International Business District, but the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) presented 10,000 units when it announced its dwellings supply measures on Jan. 29. The city, citing limits on accommodating infrastructure such as schools, said it would raise the number to a maximum of 8,000, but the government has not budged from 10,000.
At this rate, breaking ground and move-ins within the city's target schedule appear difficult. The city unveiled a blueprint to build out roads, parks, and other infrastructure by 2028, start construction of private buildings, and allow move-ins in 2030. Dwellings presales were planned for late 2027. The city broke ground on infrastructure work in December last year and had planned to install a field office next month and proceed step by step with site preparation and joint-duct installation and other work.
Amid this, calls to reset the project to square one are adding to uncertainty. Park Ju-min, the Democratic Party of Korea's preliminary candidate for Seoul mayor, proposed switching from selling the Yongsan rail yard site to private entities to a public development with the National Pension Service participating, and National Pension Service Chairman Kim Sung-joo signaled he would actively review it. On the 18th, Park posted a photo on Facebook of a meeting with Kim and said, "Instead of selling the Yongsan rail yard to the private sector, I proposed a development plan to supply 20,000 subscription-type dwellings with the National Pension Service participating."
The main idea is to shift to a public development structure in which the public sector retains land ownership and the National Pension Service participates as the operator to secure land rent and operating revenue. Through this, Park, the preliminary candidate, argues for supplying 20,000 rental dwellings instead of for-sale units. It is seen as reflecting the current administration's policy stance of expanding "high-quality rental dwellings" rather than sales. President Lee Jae-myung has consistently said public housing should be supplied as rentals rather than for sale.
An academic source said, "In public sales, the person who buys dwellings at a low price and gains the capital gains is the initial buyer," adding, "That is why there is a push to switch to rental dwellings, but it remains to be seen whether putting as many as 20,000 rental dwellings on prime land in Seoul is economically efficient."