Never mind the remote geography or even a global recession: Korean planners are dreaming very big dreams for the island of Jeju.
Through most of Korean history, Jeju was the back of beyond -- a 72km oval island off the southwestern tip of the Korean peninsula that chafed under mainland rule and was often used as a place of banishment.
More recently, the island and its main city of 530,000 people, also called Jeju, have been a favorite getaway for honeymooners and harried heads of state and industry.
Now the government says it will spend US$3.6 billion over nine years to transform Jeju into another kind of refuge, a wide-open "free international city" that it hopes will surpass Hong Kong or Singapore.
Ultimately, said Yonhap, the semiofficial Korean news agency, the island will be "an eco-friendly visa-free international city tempting tourists with sightseeing and recreation and businesspeople with lucrative high-tech, logistics and finance opportunities by 2010."
Just how the island is to preserve its main asset, its rural charm, through such intensive development was not addressed. Opponents of President Kim Dae-jung were expected to raise the issue in the National Assembly.
Neither has the government made clear to Jeju residents why it is suddenly bent on reinventing their island into a new frontier of large-scale commercialism.
But criticism may be muted by a proposal to allow every South Korean to buy US$1,200 worth of goods a year duty free on Jeju.
Sports-minded Koreans may also be persuaded to support the project by the prospect of cheap golf. The plan calls for new courses with annual fees of less than US$50 -- which is unimaginably low in this corner of Asia -- to be built in the only place in the country warm enough year round for palm trees and orange groves.
As if all of that were not enough, the Jeju committee has also announced tax breaks of a kind that mainland Koreans tirelessly demand but rarely receive.
Anyone, foreign or Korean, who cares to invest US$10 million in an enterprise on Jeju will be exempt from all taxes for the first three years and pay half the usual rates for two more. And imports will be completely free of tariffs.
Then, in a country that tends to greet foreigners in moods ranging from garrulous cordiality to austere coldness but rarely with trust, expatriates on Jeju will be free to establish their own schools and enroll foreign and local students alike.
Judging by the planning committee's descriptions, the authorities have in mind an intellectual and commercial Elysium set in bucolic splendor under the conical slopes of Mount Halla, the 1950m volcano that is South Korea's highest peak. Foreign universities will be encouraged to offer programs on Jeju of a caliber to attract students from around the world, the plan said.
In most of South Korea, every child studies English in school, but few gain fluency without considerable advanced training. But in Jeju, the committee promises, English will be treated almost as a second official language, and all government documents will be published in English and Korean.
The decision to go ahead was announced on Monday by the prime minister, Lee Han-dong, and the provincial governor, Woo Keun-min. No groundbreaking date was mentioned.
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