A contemplation on the urban fabric of Seoul, South Korea.
Architecture and Urbanisation in Seoul
Sarah Hull
This year Seoul is proudly hosting the 2017 UIA World Architects Congress. In celebration, September was designated a ‘month of architectural culture’,1 with a variety of events taking place across the city, including the ‘Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017’ (2 September – 5 November), the ‘Seoul Architecture Festival 2017’ (1 September – 24 September), the ‘9th Seoul International Architecture Film Festival’ (4 September – 24 September) and ‘The Self-Evolving City’ exhibition at the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMa) (3 September – 12 November). Whereas the majority of these events provide a platform to discuss the future of the industry within an international context, ‘The Self-Evolving City’ exhibition takes the opportunity to look back over the historical development of architecture and urbanization in South Korea (from here on, Korea), reflecting specifically on ‘the achievements of Korean contemporary architecture’.2 Though the exhibition explores these achievements from a predominantly apolitical perspective, this review endeavors to situate the exhibition’s key themes within their appropriate political context.
For a small exhibition the historical scope is broad. Chronologically structured, it begins with the relocation of Seoul to its current site at the beginning of the Chosŏn Dynasty (1394), sprinting through the economic and industrial evolution of the modern period and closing with a brief glance towards the future as imagined by number of new media arts installations and displays designed by the Open Idea (Self-Evolving Cities of the Future) competition winners. The selection of objects and installations on display is accordingly diverse, ranging from a collection of Chosŏn Dynasty city plans to modern architectural models, video and new media installations, a media wall, interview recordings and a number of contemporary architectural design projects.
Though visitor movement through the exhibition space is largely chronological, the main thrust of the exhibition (rather than presenting a linear historical progression) is to draw connections between traditional East Asian culture and contemporary Korean architectural design. The process of renewing and maintaining this dialogue between pre-modern and contemporary Korean culture has long been a crucial part of Korea’s postcolonial narrative; ‘Modernity’, as the bogey-man of this story, appears a number of times in the exhibition’s written content. Korea’s problematic relationship with modernity – something which Namhee Lee refers to as the Korean ‘crisis of historical subjectivity’3 – is not limited to the sphere of architecture: as a historical rupture which took place after the fall of the Chosŏn dynasty and was precipitated by the rapid modernization of the Japanese colonial period (1910–1945), modernity is often presented negatively by historical narratives as ‘truncated’, ‘reactionary’ and ‘imposed’.4 This sense of ‘negative’ modernity was at ‘the core of Korea’s postcolonial consciousness’5 during the post-liberation period. Korean cultural movements which have since been celebrated for over-coming modernity did so by successfully re-establishing a connection between pre-modern culture and the present; examples include Dansaekhwa (Korean monochrome movement), emerging in the mid 1970s, and the Minjung movement of the 1980s. The exhibition presents the field of Korean architecture as having had to ‘confront a double challenge: accepting and over-coming the modern.’6 Though the former has already been accomplished, over-coming the modern is described here as ‘an ongoing process’.7
The concept of the ‘self-evolving city’ is presented in the exhibition’s written content as a ‘Korean alternative’8 to the problems faced by rapid urbanization in East Asia: a potential means with which to transcend the modern. The story of Korean urbanization and industrialization is however quite unique within the category of East Asian development. Often referred to as the ‘miracle on the Han River’, the ‘rags-to-riches’ transformation of the South Korean economy during the military dictatorship of Park Chung Hee (1961–1979) produced the kind of structural transformation within three decades that most industrialized western countries took almost a century to achieve.9 What the Korean people sacrificed in workers’ rights, they gained in terms of economic growth, which is why Park’s regime is as equally reviled as it is celebrated and still remains the subject of much research and debate. The main focus of Park’s economic development strategy was to divert domestic and foreign investment almost exclusively to industrial development, heavy infrastructure and defense,10 focusing specifically on creating an export-oriented industrial economy. The spatial manifestation of these policies took the form of ‘sprawling manufacturing centers, vast networks of industrial infrastructure and entirely new cities dominated by factories and apartment towers’.11 By the end of Park’s regime, the rapid growth policy of the previous two decades had started to result in massive structural imbalances (build-up of foreign debt, inflation and widening disparities between rural and urban sectors),12 thus moving into the 1980s, government policy shifted away from growth-orientated urban development and (since the 1990s) towards one of growth-management and sustainability.13
Green growth policies, sustainability and the integration of ‘nature’ into urban planning are key issues addressed within the exhibition which, as the written content states, mainly ‘takes its inspiration from the concept of nature in East Asia’.14 To place the exhibition title in its intended cultural context, the concept of ‘self-evolving’ is based on Daoist theological rhetoric on the nature of creation: ‘the self-movement of the Tao refers to its self-evolving emanation from hidden mystery to the world of form and appearance’.15 From a Western perspective, this emphasis on the special relationship between East Asian culture and nature could potentially be seen as an overly familiar curatorial trope: an example of ‘self-orientalizing’ for the benefit of an international audience. Yet the historical significance of this relationship cannot be overstated, especially with regard to the history of Korean urban planning. The ancient Chinese art of Feng Sui or Pung’su as it’s called in Korea (or Geomancy as it’s called in the West) largely originates from Daoist thought,16 and has played a defining role in the evolution of the Korean cultural landscape since its introduction during the Unified Shilla period (A.D. 669–935). During the Kŏryo and Chosŏn dynasties, the location of grave sites, royal tombs, villages, cities and palaces were carefully selected based on a complex set of geomantic principles. As explained by Hong-key Yoon:
In geomancy, nature is perceived as a magical and mysterious being by which man can be either auspiciously or adversely influenced. If a person selects an auspicious site and occupies it properly, he will receive good fortune. If he selects an extremely inauspicious location and occupies it, he will suffer misfortune.17
The current location of Seoul, for instance, was selected on the basis of geomantic principles. As displayed by the early maps of Seoul featured in the exhibition, Seoul has both the surrounding landforms (mountains) and nearby watercourses (Han River) necessary for an auspicious location. Furthermore, as stated by the Seoul Metropolitan Government guide to the urban planning of the city, Seoul has the ‘proper balance among the four mountains and well-shaped forms associated with imaginary animals that ensure harmony mirroring the cosmos’ which ‘guarantee[s] prosperity for those who occupy the place’.18 Yet despite the mysticism of the language, the selection of auspicious locations often makes practical geographical sense. As observed by Min Soo Kang:
Even though it expresses itself in the terminology of magic, geomancy is one of the most ancient forms of a comprehensive science of urban and environmental planning. And in a small mountainous nation like Korea, where there is limited space to build settlements, it was an essential art.19
As a Korean who grew up in the West, Kang has an interesting perspective on the art of geomancy. Though he speaks the language and knows the culture, Kang left Korea at the age of five, only moving back in 1995 (after an absence of 18 years) to serve his compulsory two years of military service.20 To cut to the bone of his paper ‘Kyŏngbok Palace: History, Controversy, Geomancy’, at the time of his return the Korean public were coming toward the end of a contentious two-year debate over the planned destruction of the National Museum Building. This building had been constructed during the Japanese colonial period and as a colonial relic, ‘erected in front of the palace of the old kings to symbolize Japanese dominance’, some argued it should be destroyed ‘in order to demonstrate Korea’s transcendence of the great trials of the past’.21 Equally, many counter-argued that the demolition would be a colossal waste of money and ‘the height of jingoistic stupidity’,22 yet what Kang found most ‘interesting’ and ‘puzzling’ about the debate was the frequent references to geomantic arguments:
As I knew virtually nothing about the ancient art, I was completely bewildered by the great passion with which some of the participants in the debates discussed the National Museum Building and Kyŏng-bok Palace in geomantic terms. What also struck me was the fact that their mystical ideas were taken seriously by the media and so could not be so easily dismissed as a the strange ramblings of a few eccentrics.23
Despite heading towards decline since the Chosŏn dynasty,24 it is important to observe how geomancy still retains some cultural power within a contemporary debate. Though younger generations may hold little personal connection with geomantic ideas – which ‘are more important to older generations in rural areas than to younger generations in urban areas’25 – Korean culture is steeped in its influence and now looks for a more contemporary means to express the cultural remnants of Daoism.
Though the exhibition refrains from making any reference to the impact of political changes upon urban planning in Seoul, the effect of democratization in the late 1980s and subsequent leadership of left-wing president, Roh Moo-hyun (2003–2008), has also played a significant role in the changes to urban planning policies. Korea’s developing sense of civic consciousness is addressed in section 3 of the exhibition, ‘The New Relationship between Architecture and City’, which displays the design ideologies of two new Korean cities: Songdo and Sejong. Since the 1990s, two prominent examples of Seoul Metropolitan Government’s move towards greener urban planning were the Namsan Mountain26 and Cheonggyecheon27 stream restoration projects. Both locations held former geomantic significance within Seoul’s cultural landscape and have since had their public significance renewed as civic recreational spaces. The millennium ushered in the establishment of the ‘Seoul Urban Planning Ordinance’ (the first of its kind in Korea), which (as stated by the Seoul Metropolitan Government Urban Planning Guide) ‘was the turning point […] which put quality of life before “development”’.28 Peter G Rowe also documents the Cheonggyecheon restoration project as a historic ‘turning-point’ which ‘came to symbolize a major paradigm shift in Korean urbanization […] from simply managing public affairs to actively promoting public good’.29 Around the same time as the Cheonggyecheon project (just after 2000), the government was beginning to invest in the construction of Songdo and Sejong: two large-scale city developments built from scratch. Though conceived for very different purposes, Songdo and Sejong have both been hailed as eco-friendly cities of the future, ‘utopian environments […] where urban living is both contemporary and sustainable, bringing technology and nature together in harmony’.30
A number of the short-listed entries from the Sejong City international architectural competition are on display at the exhibition, giving some insight into the design specifications. Envisaged with the concept of the ‘public good’ in mind, the urban planning ideologies prioritize public access to nature and attempt to furnish citizens with more civic power. ‘The City of a Thousand Cities’ by Andres Perea Ortega for example, tries ‘to overcome the gap between nature and the city’ by ‘find[ing] a relationship between architecture and gardening at an urban level’.31 ‘Ancient Futures’ by Sunjoo Noh, in both name and ideology projects one of the core messages of the exhibition: ‘emphasiz[ing] production oriented toward sharing instead of maximum production, self-sufficient consumption instead of affluent consumption and opportunities for the public good instead of personal gains’.32 Another design by Jean Pierre Durig, ‘The Orbital Road’, proposes a ring-shaped city structured around a park, ‘express[ing] the desire for a democratic city that ensures equal opportunity for each individual’.33 A few of the works submitted, including the winning design, were planned as annular rings, appealing to Daoist spatial metaphors by placing empty space at the heart of the city. The final master plan was adapted from an annular ring design into a ring-shaped linear city (so as to accommodate a larger population),34 with a strong commitment to transit-oriented development as one of it’s flagship policies.35 The ideology behind Sejong’s master plan makes a stark contrast with Seoul’s Gangnam district: rapidly developed in the form of an urban grid, with streets designed to prioritize cars over pedestrians, Gangnam is symbolic of the ‘modern’ city design (and perhaps growth-driven authoritarian era) Korea wishes to transcend.
The main short-coming of the exhibition however is that it only explores the development of Songdo and Sejong through the lens of urban design ideology and therefore abstains from making in any meaningful commentary on either the lived reality of these spaces or the social, economic and political contexts in which they were created. With regards to Songdo in particular, the narrative presented by the exhibition’s written content gives a distorted image of the city’s development. It’s first assertion is that Songdo ‘stands in contrast to most newly planned urban centers which are constructed for a more specific purpose’,36 providing examples for comparison such as ‘Pudong for commerce; Canary Wharf for financial services; Brasilia for government […]’.37 Paul D. Mullins argues the contrary however, stating that Songdo was indeed conceived with a specific purpose in mind: to attract foreign investors.38 Furthermore, this vision is underlined by the developer’s marketing strategy and even reflected in the city layout and infrastructure, ‘which Jung I Kim argued is “anti-Korean”–“an imagined Euro-American urbanity distant from the exiting urban characteristics of Seoul”’.39 This original plan faced major alterations around 2008 following the global financial crisis and the United Nations Climate Change Conference, leading to a severely reduced the level of foreign investment and a subsequent rebranding of the city with a new political agenda for green growth’.40 Along with the demographic market moving from an overseas to a domestic one, further unanticipated problems began to arise. Contrary to the exhibition content, which praises Songdo’s adaptability to different cultural and economic influences, Mullins argues that Songdo’s ‘technocratic approach’ actually hinders it’s ‘ability to cope with the challenges of social complexity’.41
The change in demographic target caused an increase in the demand for Korean restaurants, informal wet markets, childcare centres, and hagwons ‘emphasis in the original’ (private tuition institutes). Specifically, in relation to restaurant-service-based jobs, workers cannot afford to live in Songdo and are forced to endure long commutes using a transport system that is currently under-developed. Certainly, the affordability of eco-urban projects is a major problem.42
Though the exhibition states that ‘Songdo is designed as an organic whole’,43 there seems to be little actualisation of these words in a city where affordable housing is not incorporated into its overall framework. Just as unforeseen economic factors dictated the changes to Songdo’s original plan, the plans for Sejong City similarly fluctuated according to the political changes of the period. Originally conceived as a new capital city under President Roh, it’s intended purpose changed twice under the next two successive presidents, thereby showing how reactive the project was to immediate political circumstances.
While traditional Korean culture remains an important part of Korea’s postcolonial narrative and influential to contemporary architectural practice, the sometimes vague, theoretical language used by the exhibition failed to fully address the social, political and economic factors intrinsic to the urban development of modern Korea. Hopefully, Korea’s urban planners of the future will soon enough live up to the ideals presented by the rhetoric of former projects, such as Sejong City, however doing so may require a wider framework of reference than this exhibition accommodates.
Sarah Hull
1 Seoul Metropolitan Government website, ‘Urban Planning News: Globally Renowned Architects Gather in Seoul for UIA 2017 Seoul World Architects Congress in September’,
http://english.seoul.go.kr/globally-renowned-architects-gather-seoul-uia-2017-seoul-world-architects-congress-september/
2 Exhibition panel, ‘The Self-Evolving City’
3 ‘[…] the central problematic of the minjung movement was a widespread anxiety between intellectuals and university students that Korean history was a history of failure, that the Korean people were not the subjects of their own history’, Namhee Lee, The Making of Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2007, p 2
4 Lee, p 3
5 Lee, p 3
6 Exhibition panel, ‘The Self-Evolving City’
7 Exhibition panel, ‘The Self-Evolving City’
8 Exhibition panel, ‘The Self-Evolving City’
9 Kwan S Kim, ‘The Korean Miracle (1962-1980) Revisited: Myths and Realities in Strategy and Development’, The Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, 1991, https://kellogg.nd.edu/sites/default/files/old_files/documents/166_0.pdf,
10 Justin Stern, ‘The Chaebols & the City: Corporate Conglomerates as Agents of Urban Transformation’, http://infusion.fulbright.or.kr/the-chaebols-the-city-corporate-conglomerates-as-agents-of-urban-transformation/
11 Stern
12 Kim
13 Seoul Department of Urban Planning, ‘Urban Planning of Seoul’, Seoul Metropolitan Government, 2009, p 11
14 Exhibition panel, ‘The Self-Evolving City’
15 Paul S. Chung, Constructing Irregular Theology: Bamboo and Minjung in East Asian Perspective, Brill, Leiden/Boston, 2009, p 67
16 Min Soo Kang, ‘Kyongbok Palace: History, Controversy, Geomancy’, Manoa, Vol 11, Issue 2, Winter 1999, p 33
17 Hong-key Yoon, ‘The Image of Nature in Geomancy’, GeoJournal, Vol 4, Issue 1, 1980, p 344
18 Seoul Department of Urban Planning, p 9
19 Kang, p 32
20 Kang, p 36
21 Kang, p 29
22 Kang, p 29
23 Kang, p 30
24 Kang, p 32
25 Yoon, p 343
26 The Mt. Namsan restoration ‘removed apartments from the slopes of Mt. Namsan and restored the forest’ creating a space ‘where citizens can enjoy nature and relax.’ Seoul Department of Urban Planning, p 11
27 By demolishing an elevated freeway and removing portions of a grade-level roadway, a section of the historic stream was able to be restored as the centre-piece of a six-kilometer-long public park. Peter G Rowe ed, ‘A City and Its Stream: An Appraisal of the Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project and its Environs in South Korea’ (a research report of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design), President and Fellows of Harvard College, USA, 2010, p 23
28 Seoul Department of Urban Planning, p 11
29 Rowe, p 17
30 Sofia Shwayri ‘Is this the latest modern city or the first of a future breed?’, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, Vol 22, Issue 1, Fall 2010, p 35
31 Exhibition panel, ‘The Self-Evolving City’
32 Exhibition panel, ‘The Self-Evolving City’
33 Exhibition panel, ‘The Self-Evolving City’
34 Exhibition panel, ‘The Self-Evolving City’
35 OECD, Urban Transport Governance and Transport Development in South Korea, OECD Publishing, Paris, 2017, p 117
36 Exhibition panel, ‘The Self-Evolving City’
37 Exhibition panel, ‘The Self-Evolving City’
38 Paul D Mullins, ‘The Ubiquitous-Eco-City of Songdo: An Urban Systems Perspective on South Korea’s Green City Approach’, Urban Planning, Vol 2, Issue 2, 2017, p 7
39 Mullins, p 7
40 Mullins, p 7
41 Mullins, p 10 – 11
42 Mullins, p 8
43 Exhibition panel, ‘The Self-Evolving City’