Speaking of Korean cities, one of the best is probably Seoul, the capital of South Korea. Seoul has a long history and is called Seoul in the history of the Korean kingdom. It was not until 2005 that the Chinese translation was changed to Seoul.
The name does not affect its status as a center of Korea or even a major city in Asia. As a well-deserved center of South Korea, it integrates politics, economy, science and technology, and culture. Whether it is historical culture or modern atmosphere, it adheres to its distinctive characteristics and strong competitiveness and becomes synonymous with South Korea.
South Korea's choice of Seoul as its capital has a deep historical origin. In 1394, Li Chenggui, korean king moved its capital to Seoul, and the Republic of Korea was established in 1948. In these hundreds of years, Seoul continued to exist as the capital. Therefore, South Korea, with a narrow border, must still take Seoul as the center after the founding of the People's Republic of China, and first adopted an unbalanced regional development strategy after the founding of the People's Republic of China.
Since 1970s, with the great progress of Seoul's economic development, the problems caused by unbalanced development have attracted the attention of the people and rulers. As early as 1977, park chung-hee, then president of South Korea, put forward the idea of moving the capital, but at that time he paid more attention to the elements of peace. Because of the grim situation of the Cold War at that time, Seoul was close to the 38th parallel in the north, and it was easy to bear the threat of war when a war broke out.
At that time, politicians and people didn't take this matter to heart. The so-called relocation of the capital was put on hold for a long time after the end of the Cold War, which lasted for more than 20 years. It was not until 2002 that Roh Moo-hyun once again took moving the capital as his campaign slogan that he began the game process of moving the capital in the new century. Until now, there is no clear result in moving the capital to South Korea. So why is Korea, a small country, keen on the difficult project of moving the capital?
In fact, it is not uncommon for a country to move its capital. Throughout the history of recent decades, many countries, including Brazil, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, etc., have implemented plans to move their capitals and won. Investigating the reasons why they moved to the capital is always inseparable from economic factors.
As the central city of South Korea, Seoul is a combination of government agencies, enterprises, first-class universities and cultural institutions. Behind the remarkable achievements of modern development, there are actually a lot of hidden dangers, which are commonly known as "urban diseases". According to the population statistics of 20 18, the permanent population of Seoul once reached10.04 million, and the capital city circle occupied nearly half of the national population, and the population density once surpassed other famous metropolises such as Tokyo and London.
Under the pressure of population explosion, a series of urban hypertrophy diseases followed, such as traffic congestion, crowded houses, housing panic, plummeting house prices, air pollution and so on.
Take house prices as an example. In 2005, house prices in Seoul remained high. Although several satellite cities have been built in the suburbs, it still takes nearly 500 million won to buy a 90-square-meter apartment in Seoul, which is equivalent to the salary accumulated by an ordinary civil servant for more than ten years. Some speculators use house prices to make a fortune in real estate, which makes people miserable. In addition to Seoul's unbearable development pressure, Seoul's dominance also makes South Korea's economic development extremely unbalanced.
Seoul has a natural advantage in development. With the promotion of the unbalanced strategy since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the northern metropolitan area with Seoul as the center covers a small area, but it has concentrated more than 70% of its economic strength. Other central governments not only have poor economic development, but also have not improved for a long time. Economic imbalance has brought about political, cultural and other aspects of imbalance, and even led to conflicts between regions. This is not good news for Korea's long-term development and good image. Therefore, since the beginning of the new century, the balanced development of moving the capital has been put on the agenda.
Another important reason why South Korea proposed to move the capital is strategic peaceful thinking. As we know, as early as the park chung-hee period in the last century, in order to prevent the Northern War from threatening the peace of the capital, the South Korean capital was advocated to move south. This is indeed a problem that has to be considered. Although the cold war has ended, the peaceful situation in the new century still forces Korean instructors not to give up their in-depth thinking on this issue.
As an important military base of the US military in Asia, the US military stationed in South Korea plays an important role in maintaining Korean cities. For a long time, garrison headquarters has been located in the Longshan base in Seoul. However, since the end of the Cold War, the scope of activities of the US military has been shrinking year by year, and it is moving southward. It was not until 20 18 that the headquarters was moved to Pyeongtaek base in Gyeonggi Province, which meant that Seoul's ability to be directly maintained was greatly reduced, and a long-term problem that could not be ignored was that Seoul was only 40 kilometers south of the military suspension front line of the 38th parallel.
Since the beginning of the new century, the DPRK-ROK relations have not stopped substantially, and contradictions and conflicts have appeared from time to time. In addition, with the constant improvement of modern weapons, Seoul has to guard against military threats from neighboring countries from time to time while establishing its own defense system. Once a conflict breaks out, it is difficult for these 40 kilometers to resist external threats, so it is a better choice to move the capital to the territorial center or even the south.
As a national event, opposing the heavy resistance to the relocation of power is the first initiative of the government, and the biggest opposition voice comes from the opposition party. In 2002, Roh Moo-hyun boldly put forward the idea of moving the capital as a campaign slogan. Because of this idea, he immediately won the support of the people in the central region and won the general election. After taking office, he immediately began to implement this plan and formulated the Special Law of the New Administrative Capital.
When this law came out, there was a lot of opposition, especially represented by the Grand National Party, and the Ministry of Justice filed a constitutional lawsuit, arguing that the treaty was unconstitutional. In the end, the Ministry of Justice ruled that it was unconstitutional, and the word "moving the capital" will no longer be used in the future. Although it left an alternative word of "administrative compound city" for the administrative capital, it still dealt a heavy blow to Roh Moo-hyun. He immediately announced his resignation in 2003. Apart from the opposition of the opposition party, it is closely related to politics.
As we all know, South Korea's rapid development in recent decades depends on its authoritarian development form, and its political and economic rights are closely separated, forming a powerful economic and political group in the capital circle, including both regional political power entrenched in the north for a long time and numerous chaebol with strong financial resources. If the capital moves south, it will shake the foundation of vested interest groups and have an unprecedented impact on its own development and even the overall situation of South Korea.
Faced with the idea of moving the capital, all factions must first criticize the plan of moving the capital through various means such as academics and speeches. For example, economists and entrepreneurs believe that moving the capital will lead to a sharp drop in housing prices in the capital circle, presenting a crisis of hollowing out industries. The Grand National Party, which lost the general election, launched a fierce attack on Roh Moo-hyun's plan to move the capital, including park chung-hee's daughter park geun-hye.
The people's deep-rooted "capital complex" makes it difficult to move the capital. In addition to the fierce opposition from politicians and chaebol who have direct economic interests, more people are opposed to moving the capital because of their deep "capital complex".
Seoul, formerly known as Seoul, has existed as the capital since Li Chenggui, korean king, abandoned Beijing and moved to Hanyang in 1394. Its history of more than 600 years is unique and unshakable. Whether it is the royal remains left by the Korean dynasty in history or the large concentration of administrative, legislative and judicial institutions today, Seoul, as a well-deserved capital, has a profound historical and modern background. Including the pronunciation of Seoul in Korean, "Seoul" also stands for the capital or capital city.
In fact, it is difficult to regard opposing the move of the capital as a radical traditional thought, which in itself is a nation's confession and respect for its own cultural tradition, and a judgment on Seoul's deviation from the perspective of history and ideals. In such an environment, it is difficult for any other city to shake Seoul's status as the capital in the hearts of the Korean people. If we move the capital to another city without considering economic and political factors, it will be a psychological challenge at first and will inevitably be resisted by the broad masses of the people.
If the above is only the bad results that may be brought about by moving the capital in theory, we should mention the most ideal elements: how much resources are consumed by the demand for moving the capital and how much the demand has paid. According to the Law on Special Measures for Administrative Capital passed by Parliament in 2003, it will take about 27 years to complete the relocation plan after determining the address of the capital. But this is only a budget made on the premise that everything went well in that year, and it is more likely to ignore many problems such as rising prices, deflation, domestic and foreign resources and so on. The total investment in practice will certainly expand from time to time with the shutdown of the project.
Based on the existing conditions, judging from the planned construction area and architectural design, whether it is the investment or the consumption of manpower, material resources and financial resources, South Korea's relocation to the capital will surely be one of the largest projects in the world. This is an incredible price for a country with a territory of only 90,000 square kilometers.
After making a compromise from moving the capital to the administrative center, the usual Sejong city seems to have initially possessed the scope of the new administrative capital. However, in practice, due to the lack of early planning and the imperfection of later establishment, the positioning of Sejong city is still very vague, exposing many defects, especially the lagging infrastructure, inconvenient transportation and lack of supporting educational and entertainment equipment.
The original administrative staff in Seoul are busy running between the two places, but commuting has become the biggest problem. The supporting equipment is not perfect, which can not meet the living needs of the staff. The most worrying thing is that the form of decentralized administration between the two places leads to the decentralization of administrative functions and the decline of administrative efficiency. Generally speaking, just moving the capital to an administrative capital exposes the problems of large investment, long time and slow effect, and the difficulty of moving the capital is incredible.
South Korea has moved its capital for decades since 1970s. Although there has been a slow pause recently, it is far from achieving the so-called purpose of moving the capital, and even the completion of an administrative center compound city is a problem.
It is an inevitable measure to deal with Seoul's urban diseases and unbalanced regional development under the new development environment. However, whether all this can be based on the word "moving the capital" and how to restrain short-term disadvantages to achieve long-term interests require the Korean government and politicians to make a correct decision with great wisdom and courage.