On the 25th, at the construction site of Krafton's new headquarters in Seongsu-dong, Seongdong District, Seoul. At the site of the former E-MART Seongsu branch, work was in full swing to erect the steel frame that will bear the building's load. The building will have eight floors underground and 17 above ground. The design was taken on by British master architect David Chipperfield.
Observers say policy incentives, including eased floor area ratio limits after selection for Seoul's "pilot project for creative and innovative urban architectural design," influenced Krafton's decision to move from Gangnam to Seongsu.
The city of Seoul raised the site's maximum floor area ratio by 80 percentage points, from 480% to 560%. It also fast-tracked related administrative procedures, including architectural review and traffic and environmental impact assessments. When completed in 2028, the resident population alone is expected to be around 10,000.
◇ IT foundation and cultural content converge… Seongsu heats up
The transformation of Seongsu-dong is already underway. The opening of Seoul Forest, pushed by then-Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak in 2005, and the city's designation in 2009 of a strategic maintenance zone along the Han River were the catalysts. The quasi-industrial area, once packed with plastic injection factories and shoe workshops, has turned into a commercial district filled with cafes, bakeries and accessory shops.
Around lunchtime that day, college students on break, foreign tourists and nearby office workers mingled on the streets of Seongsu-dong.
Along the stretch from the entrance of "Factorial Seongsu" on Yeonmujang-gil to "Seoul Forest The Space," information technology (IT), fashion and cultural content corporations have been moving in one after another. Long lines formed in front of restaurants and bakeries. Park Min-hyeong, 22, a college student, said, "These days the ages and nationalities have become more diverse."
On the 21st of last month, the Seoul Metropolitan Government convened its urban planning committee and expanded the "Seongsu IT Industry and Distribution Development Promotion District" to cover the entire quasi-industrial area. It added the cultural content industry to the list of recommended sectors. The plan is to build it into a business district by adding content to the IT-centered industrial structure.
A Seoul city official said, "We are moving beyond a pop-up-store-centered commercial area to a business district where talent and innovative corporations gather."
◇ A 79-story mixed-use complex on the Sampyo site
Another axis of change is the Sampyo Remicon site across from Seoul Forest. The land, which remained a factory for 45 years, will be developed into a mixed-use complex with offices, lodging, cultural and retail facilities reaching up to 79 stories. The total floor area is about 48,000㎡. Groundbreaking could come as early as the end of this year.
The project has been discussed since 2004. At the time, Mayor Lee Myung-bak put forward a plan to create Seoul Forest along with transferring the factory. Afterward, the city of Seoul introduced a pre-negotiation system to flesh out the development plan.
The pre-negotiation system is a method in which the private and public sectors discuss public contribution plans when developing sites of 5,000㎡ or more that involve changes in land use zoning.
In the process, the city proposed an exceptional plan to upgrade the zoning from type 1 general residential to general commercial and to relax the floor area ratio to as high as 800%. But the plan was halted in 2012 due to the so-called "35-story rule" under former Mayor Park Won-soon.
The city later resumed negotiations and reached a final agreement in Feb. last year. The scale of public contributions is estimated to be in the 600 billion won range. Seoul plans to invest this in expanding transportation infrastructure and creating a unicorn startup hub (about 53,000㎡).
◇ Housing functions strengthened… redevelopment for 9,000 households resumes
The Seongsu Strategic Maintenance Zone project is also picking up speed again. After the zone was designated in 2009, it had stalled for more than a decade, but with the announcement of changes to the maintenance plan, a framework was set to push forward with roughly 9,000 households. The process of selecting builders is underway, centered on Seongsu districts 1 and 4.
Seoul plans to foster Seongsu as a strategic hub north of the Han River through a "three-pronged reorganization" linking the expansion of the promotion district, development of the Sampyo site and the strategic maintenance zone project.
To that end, Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon visited the Grand Canal Dock district in Ireland in 2023. The area is a case where a declining port gas storage site was redeveloped into a waterfront mixed-use district combining offices, commerce, culture and housing over 366,000㎡.
On the back of deregulation and tax benefits, it attracted Google, Apple and Meta, and established itself as the "Silicon Valley of Europe," with theaters, a convention center and 2,600 dwellings.
A Seoul city official said, "This is a project to turn quasi-industrial areas into spaces where innovative industries and jobs coexist," adding, "It will become a symbolic example of redesigning the competitiveness of the north of the Han."
☞ 35-story rule
A policy that uniformly limited new and rebuilt residential buildings in Seoul to 35 stories or fewer. It had the advantages of protecting the landscape and preventing monopolization of views. However, controversy over the mass production of cookie-cutter "matchbox" apartments and restrictions on redevelopment led to its official abolition in 2023.