The whole controversy over moving the capital of South Korea

"Sejong" is said to be the wisest king in the history of the Korean Peninsula. However, this prestigious title caused an eight-year dispute within South Korea about "moving the capital."

On January 11, 2010, although South Korean Prime Minister Chung Yun-chan had completely abolished the original plan to relocate the national ministries and commissions "Nine Ministries, Two Divisions and Two Offices" in the newly announced "Sejong City Construction Plan Amendment" " Content - This means that the future Sejong City will no longer be a "new administrative capital", but an economic city centered on education and science. However, various controversies about the construction of the new city have not subsided.

The divergence of interests between the ruling and opposition parties in South Korea, as well as the rift between the country's uneven development in the north and south, have been exposed in this controversy. As early as 2002, when Roh Moo-hyun was running for president, he played the capital relocation card, that is, moving the capital of South Korea from Seoul, which is close to the 38th line of military demarcation between the north and south, to the central region-Chungcheongnam-do. He claimed that the purpose of moving the capital was two-fold: to keep the capital away from the military demarcation line and the capital should be in the center of the country; and to allow balanced economic and social development in all regions of the country.

At that time, Seoul’s urban population exceeded 12 million. Together with the Incheon Metropolitan City and the capital economic circle of Gyeonggi Province, 40% of South Korea’s population, nearly half of the manufacturing industry and 70% of the GDP were concentrated. The economic and social development level of other regions is quite different from that of the capital region. Therefore, the decision to "move the capital" does have the original intention of eradicating the serious urban problems of the capital area such as "population explosion, traffic congestion, heavy environmental pollution, and excessive real estate prices" and achieving balanced development among regions.

But in fact, the real purpose of Roh Moo-hyun's "moving the capital" card is not obvious to outsiders, but to win votes from the central region (Chungcheongnam-do and Chungcheongbuk-do). For fear of losing votes in the central region, candidates from other parties who ran with President Roh Moo-hyun at that time did not dare to oppose the relocation of the capital and had no choice but to agree.

After Roh Moo-hyun became president in 2003, he began to push for the implementation of the capital relocation plan in order to fulfill his promise. Unexpectedly, at this time, the largest opposition party, the Grand National Party, went against its promise and firmly resisted. In the end, the Constitutional Court of South Korea interpreted the constitution and held that the capital relocation plan was illegal, and the capital relocation plan subsequently fell through.

However, the Roh Moo-hyun government settled for the next best thing and changed the plan to move the capital to build a "Sejong Administrative City" in Chungcheongnam-do before 2012 (hereinafter referred to as the original plan) - integrating some national ministries and commissions (nine (Second Office of the Second Department of the Ministry) will be moved to Sejong City to be built, and some public enterprises and institutions will also be moved into it. The wishful thinking at that time was that as national ministries, commissions, public enterprises and institutions moved into Sejong City, many private enterprises would also move in, and the local economic development would improve. It is said that the 17th National Congress at the time also passed this " original bill".

With the passing of the Roh Moo-hyun era, the compromise plan of "moving the capital" is destined to be inescapable and will become a tasteless waste for the next government. As soon as Lee Myung-bak, who ran for the Grand National Party in 2008, came to power, he repeatedly expressed the idea of ??abandoning the "original bill" - although when he ran for president in 2007, he also promised to pursue the "original bill" if elected for the same reason of votes. Construction of Sejong City.

By September 2009, the Lee Myung-bak government had a new prime minister, Chung Yun-chan. Before he took office, this new prime minister frequently spoke and criticized the "original case" of Sejong City. He believes that the original case is a continuation of Roh Moo-hyun's plan to move the capital, and the essence is still to move the capital. A fatal weakness of this "capital relocation" plan is that it does not take into account the situation after the north and south of the Korean Peninsula are unified in the future, because Seoul will be at the center of the Korean Peninsula by then, and the proposed Sejong City will not be the center of the entire peninsula.

Zheng Yuncan has many reasons for opposing the "original proposal", such as building Sejong City into a political city that relies on state capital injection (blood transfusion). Such a city's economic hematopoietic function (Korean media calls it self-sufficiency) is low. , cannot attract a large number of enterprises to enter, and the jobs created are extremely limited; and Sejong City and Seoul City will form two centers, which will inevitably affect the efficiency of national ministries, commissions, and agencies. What's more, he put forward the view that "improving the level of national competitiveness is more important than balanced regional development" to defend his opposition to the "original case".

Lee Myung-bak fully supports Zheng Yuncan’s ideas. In fact, the above-mentioned views are Lee Myung-bak’s own ideas. He also responded to the accusation that the opposition parties who defended the original bill should abide by their campaign promises and not renege on their promises. He said that he could apologize for what he said during the campaign, but now that the "original bill" is revised, the national interest comes first.

After Zheng Yuncan took office as Prime Minister, he established the "Sejong City Construction Public-Public Design Committee", a policy research and consulting organization directly under the Prime Minister's Office. After nine meetings of the committee, on January 11 this year, Prime Minister Chung Yun-chan finally announced the Korean government’s “Amendment to the Sejong City Construction Plan” (hereinafter referred to as the new plan), which is the “Abandoned and Relocated Nine Departments and Two Sites” mentioned above. The original plan of the Second Hall was changed to a self-sufficient city integrating education, science and economy." As expected, the new case met with fierce opposition from many forces in South Korea.

The first is the opposition parties, including of course the largest opposition party, the Democratic Party. When Roh Moo-hyun ran for president on behalf of this party and proposed a plan to move the capital, and later proposed the original proposal to build a "Sejong Administrative City", the Democratic Party must now firmly defend the original proposal and oppose the new proposal. There is also the second largest opposition party, the Liberty Forward Party. The Chungcheong region is the party’s stronghold. Naturally, the Liberty Forward Party is unwilling to lose this large “vote base.”

The ruling Grand National Party is not monolithic in its attitude towards Sejong City. There are pro-Lee faction (supporting Lee Myung-bak) and pro-Park faction (supporting Park Chung-hee’s daughter Park Jin-hye) within the Grand National Party. Park Jin-hye once served as the leader of the Grand National Party. In the last presidential election, she lost to Lee Myung-bak in the party's preselection. Since then, the two have been seemingly inseparable and have many political differences. South Korean media even called the pro-Park faction the quasi-opposition party in South Korea. Pro-Park faction has always believed that the original case should be adhered to in Sejong City, on the grounds that politicians must keep their promises.

Interestingly, within a few days after the new case was announced, people in cities in the Chungcheong region rallied and launched a citizen movement to denounce the "white paper conspiracy in Sejong City (that is, to let the original case go to waste)." Protest slogans such as "Stick to the original bill and not modify it" and "Broken promises are not conducive to regional balance" are everywhere. During the protest, some extreme people did not hesitate to shave off their hair. This method of shaving one's own head to humiliate the other party is a very severe method of protest in Korean tradition.

In fact, various forces opposing the new case in South Korea are currently planning a joint action and will formally propose to "abolish the new case in Sejong City and impeach Prime Minister Zheng Yuncan." JoongAng Ilbo, one of South Korea's mainstream newspapers, recently conducted a public opinion poll. Among 1,012 adults nationwide who responded to a telephone survey, 49.9% were in favor of the government's new plan for Sejong City, while 40% were opposed.

If divided by region, respondents from Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon in the capital area have the highest proportion of those who approve of the new bill (58 percent in favor). However, those who are most fiercely opposed to the new bill are not those from the Chungcheong area. The respondents (with an approval rate of 38) are the respondents from South Jeolla Province, North Jeolla Province and Gwangju City (the approval rate is only 24), the "vote bases" of the largest opposition Democratic Party. To a certain extent, it reflects that the dispute between the original case and the new case is a battle between the interests of political parties.

South Korean public opinion has proposed various ways to resolve the dispute between the original case and the new case in Sejong City, such as asking the government to lower its profile and educate the people about the new case, or asking for a national vote. However, before the new case was announced, Zheng Yuncan had visited the Chungcheong area four times and was repeatedly "welcomed" by the people with tomatoes and eggs. Therefore, among the many methods, the "national vote" to resolve the dispute between the original case and the new case was the most popular.

Currently, the new case in Sejong City has to be submitted to Congress for discussion. South Korea’s National Assembly has 298 seats. Among them, the ruling Grand National Party holds 169 seats (57). As long as 150 seats support the new bill, it can be passed. But don’t forget that 52 of the 169 members of the Grand National Party are pro-Park members. Who can guarantee whether these members will abandon the “new” and embrace the “old”? Therefore, it is still unclear whether the new Sejong City bill can be passed by the National Assembly.