The transition committee for Seoul's Geumcheon-gu district mayor — inaugurating the ninth elected term — said it will move quickly to deliver results on pressing issues including a data center and a general hospital, through active communication with residents.
The committee held a press briefing Monday morning at the Geumcheon district office to present the results of its activities as it wrapped up its work.
Launched on June 18, the committee comprised 15 members led by chair Yoo Hee-bok, a former head of the Geumcheon District Sports Council. It operated through three subcommittees — planning and economy, administrative safety, and culture and welfare — to develop action plans for incoming District Mayor Choi Gi-chan's campaign pledges and chart responses to key pending issues.
The committee identified the construction of a data center in Geumcheon as the most urgent issue to resolve. The data center project, planned for the Doksan-dong area of Geumcheon-gu, faces no legal obstacles but has run into strong opposition from nearby residents concerned about electromagnetic radiation. Earlier this year, construction was halted for about a month and a half due to resident complaints before resuming.
The data center has become one of the most contentious issues in Geumcheon-gu. After taking office, District Mayor Choi made establishing a "resident-participatory review system and regulatory improvements for data center construction" his first official approval.
Under the new framework, the district will introduce a resident-input review process starting before a building permit is even filed. Applicants will be required to submit consent from a majority of residents within a 200-meter radius of the site boundary, along with a self-assessment checklist, when applying for a building permit. The verification process will follow a three-stage sequence — expert written review, a conflict-mediation council, and architectural committee consultation — with transparency as the guiding principle.
"On the data center issue, the developer, the district office, the emergency response committee and the transition committee — all four parties — promise to do their utmost to resolve the problem," Yoo said.
The construction of a general hospital was cited as another priority project for the ninth elected term. Efforts to build a general hospital in Geumcheon-gu date back to the sixth elected term. In 2013, Booyoung Group purchased an 80,985-square-meter site in the Siheung-dong area of Geumcheon-gu, formerly the factory site of Taihan Cable & Solution. In 2017, Booyoung Housing and Dongkwang Housing established the Woojeong Medical Foundation and contributed 45 billion won ($29.2 million) to acquire the hospital site and fund operations, laying the groundwork for the project. The planned Woojeong Geumcheon General Hospital — a working title — was designed as an 810-bed facility spanning 175,818 square meters of total floor area across five below-ground floors and 18 above-ground floors.
A groundbreaking ceremony was held in 2022, but the project has stalled since. A pre-construction survey uncovered the Korean narrow-mouthed toad, a class-2 endangered species, triggering a habitat relocation effort. Fluoride levels in the site's soil were subsequently found to exceed regulatory limits, requiring soil decontamination work, and construction has been pushed back repeatedly ever since.
"Residents who have been waiting for the hospital since 2022 are expressing disappointment," a transition committee official said. "In the ninth elected term, we plan to designate the deputy district mayor as the operational point of contact and explore various approaches — including mixed-use development — with profitability in mind."
ikson@heraldcorp.com
