"Yongsan, grab it while you can!" beckoned advertisements for apartments bordering the American military headquarters on the Korean Peninsula. "Korea's Central Park that will change the map of Seoul!"
Try to grab it they did. About 250,000 potential buyers recently put down a total of US$6 billion in deposits, hoping to be chosen for one of the 629 apartments or 141 offices in the City Park towers.
For now, the color of this sprawling downtown base is not park green, but US Army green. But, suddenly, Seoul's hottest real estate is ringing an American base that in more normal times is ringed with the riot police.
Three years from now, when new owners are to move into the 39-story City Park towers, most of the 7,000 American soldiers are to be moving out, ending the presence of foreign soldiers at Yongsan since 1882.
First, troops of China's Qing dynasty seized this strategic site between the Han River and Korea's royal court. About 25 years later, the occupiers of Yongsan, or Dragon Hill, were Japanese Imperial Army troops who established their military headquarters there. Today's tenants, American troops, live behind cinder block walls topped with barbed wire, esthetic scars that evoke a Fort Leavenworth transplanted from Kansas to Korea. (The American military recently announced that 3,600 American soldiers would move to Iraq from South Korea, reducing the American troop strength here by 10 percent.)
"Whoever rules Yongsan, rules Korea," is the old refrain. In a new twist, today's rulers are players in Seoul's real estate bubble, a commercial frenzy that evokes Tokyo's bubble of the late 1980's.
"We are now the No. 1 destination for development in Seoul," Jeon Young-sik, a 31-year-old marketer for the City Park towers, said in an office festooned with posters for other projects in the long-neglected neighborhood: Megatrium, Yongsan Eclat, Daewoo Trump World III and a tower cluster to rise in the red-light district near the base.
The target for these billions of dollars in investments is a run-down neighborhood of bars, discount shops and apartment buildings built low enough to allow military helicopters to take off and land.
"Compared to the air-brushed advertisements, this site is not that great a location," admitted Kim Su-yeon, whose father put down almost US$1 million for a 280m2 apartment in City Park. "So, yes, I see a big bubble."
Under an agreement near completion, American troops stationed here are to move over the next three years to an expanded base at Pyongtaek, a city 62km south.
An American pullout from Yongsan would provide 656 acres of open space to the 10 million residents of Seoul, a city where parks were sacrificed in the rush to create the world's 12th-largest economy. Almost overnight, Seoul, one of Asia's most densely populated cities, could have one of world's largest urban parks.
"Yongsan is 80 percent the size of New York's Central Park," Lee Myung-bak, Seoul's mayor, said, barely suppressing his jubilation in an interview at City Hall. Central Park is 843 acres. "If the US troops are relocated by 2007, it would be the first time in 125 years that the Yongsan site is returned to the people of Korea."
But President Roh Moo-hyun, who survived impeachment to win back full presidential powers on May 14, has described Yongsan as "a symbol of foreign intervention, invasion and dependence."
Now, Koreans ask, who will pay for the move? More than a decade ago, South Korea promised to buy land and invest in facilities and services for a new American headquarters, about US$3 billion. But the new, liberal-dominated National Assembly that opened on June 6 is expected to question the cost.
"Now things have changed in Korea; we are in a position to renegotiate," said Mr. Jeon, the real estate promoter. "We will not accommodate all the US requests unconditionally. We will probably pay for what we can pay for, and the US side will pay for the rest."
Rather than reduce military spending, South Korean defense officials argue, why not raise the money by auctioning off this prime real estate?
"The land must not be sold to developers," said Seo Jae-chul, a director of Green Korea, a major environmental group. "If that happens, it will directly affect the political livelihood of the Roh administration."
Already, new uses are nibbling at the park. South Korean officials have agreed in principle to allow the construction of a US Embassy on one corner and an English school and a German school on other corners.
Inside Yongsan, some American officers recall that the US first agreed to leave Yongsan in 1988. The move was delayed because successive South Korean governments never found a suitable site outside Seoul.
"I bet my paycheck that while I am in the Army it will never happen," said one American officer here. "Twenty years from now, I will still be reading about it. It is a great political platform for some people. It's a self-licking ice cream cone."
But Pentagon planners vow that the move from Seoul will not be stopped. To sweeten the shift, the US has promised to spend US$11 billion over three years to upgrade American forces in South Korea.
"We move this time, or we just leave," said Scott Snyder, a Korea specialist who works for The Asia Foundation, a research institute. "A brigade could be relocated to Iraq, and then not come back."
Last fall, South Korean conservatives were startled to hear an American defense secretary suddenly sound as if he were ready to demonstrate for green parks and Korean sovereignty. On a visit here, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked at a news conference, "If foreign troops were stationed in New York's Central Park, would it be acceptable to Americans?"
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under