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Scenic rural area tipped as future ROK capital
(Agenices)
Updated: 2004-07-06 01:18

Rural Yongi County in the central Republic of Korea (ROK) was tapped Monday as the likely future seat of government under a controversial US$45 billion plan to move the country's capital away from crowded Seoul.

President Roh Moo-hyun made relocating the capital to relieve congestion and ease regional rivalries a key pledge in his election campaign. The project -- set to begin in 2007 and be completed in 2030 -- was approved by parliament last year.

An aerial shot taken on Friday shows part of Yongi, which was given the highest marks among four future capital candidate sites. [Reuters]

Officials from Seoul, a city of 10.3 million people which has been a Korean capital since the 14th century, have criticized the plan as wasteful and ill-considered.

Last week, more than 10,000 people gathered at City Hall to protest the relocation.

In Yongi, a lush land of rice paddies and low-lying hills about 80 kilometres southeast of Seoul, the county's highest official hailed the decision as "a great project of a thousand years -- not only for Yongi but for the country."

But county chief Lee Ki-bong said he still has to reassure the area's 85,000 people, who fear their rural lifestyle will be lost and resent "that strangers are in their backyards taking pictures, pointing this way and that."

"The plan means a lot of people have to leave the land they have become attached to, where they have lived on the land," he said. "They are worried," said Lee, who pledged to work with the government to find jobs for those displaced.

Yongi and adjacent counties of nearby Kongju, an ancient capital, won the highest marks among four candidates evaluated by the Presidential Committee on Administrative Capital Relocation.

The committee said Yongi's topography and access to highways, an airport and high-speed railways were favourable for a new seat for the administrative and legislative branches of government.

Roh and other proponents say moving the capital, a plan hatched in the 1960s, will ease Seoul's horrendous traffic and high housing costs and reduce its stranglehold on the economy.

Seoul means 'capital'

Seoul -- which means "capital" in Korean -- is also the cultural, educational, business and financial capital of the ROK, a country the size of Belgium or Pennsylvania with a population of 48 million people.

"About 47 per cent of Korea's population live on less than 12 per cent of our territory," said Park Byeong-seog, a lawmaker from the ruling Uri Party. "We cannot develop our economy or upgrade our living standard with that deformity," he said.

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