Land Ministry vice minister vows Boston-style youth housing, eyes Yongsan garden site

Kim I-tak, first vice minister of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, said the government plans to supply quality housing for young people and newlyweds in prime locations — modeled on Boston's startup housing program — and that he would consult with the Seoul Metropolitan Government on whether to use the children's garden inside Yongsan Park as a housing site.

Kim made the remarks Friday on MBC Radio's "Kim Jong-bae's Focus," saying the government intends to build a large number of apartments and residential officetels in well-located, attractive areas for young people and newlywed couples.

On modular housing, Kim said construction costs remain about 30 percent higher than conventional apartments because economies of scale have yet to be achieved, but added that the Korea Land and Housing Corporation will purchase and supply more than 5,000 modular units per year to housing sites.

Kim also said the government would continue working to align positions with the Seoul Metropolitan Government over the children's garden inside Yongsan Park, where the two sides have recently been at odds.

He said Yongsan Park covers about 3.3 million square meters while the children's garden accounts for roughly 297,000 square meters — comparable in total scale to Yeouido, which he called "an enormous tract of land." When asked whether the government's thinking was that the children's garden, being less than a tenth of the park, could be put to use, Kim said he would discuss such options with the Seoul Metropolitan Government.

The children's garden had been floated as one of the candidate housing supply sites ahead of the government's follow-up housing supply measures announced Thursday, but it was ultimately left out of the package. The Seoul Metropolitan Government has opposed building housing on the children's garden site.

Kim said there are other sites returned by the United States beyond the children's garden, including Camp Kim and former embassy residential compounds, and noted that many have called for using some of those returned parcels around Yongsan Park to provide housing for younger and future generations.

On the Taereung Golf Course in Nowon-gu, Seoul — announced as an urban supply site under the Jan. 29 housing measures — Kim said the World Heritage Impact Assessment cleared the Cultural Heritage Administration's review two days earlier. He said domestic procedures are now complete and the process is expected to wrap up this year once UNESCO procedures are finalized, with actual land surveys set to begin in the second half of the year.

Regarding the additional 73,000-unit public housing district the government has said it will announce later, Kim said the government aims to complete administrative procedures as quickly as possible and hopes to make the announcement as early as late September or in October.

He said the 73,000-unit figure still requires administrative steps such as drafting survey reports, noting that each lot number is tied to individual property rights and that even a single omission could trigger litigation. Compiling the survey reports requires pulling every lot number for public review, he said, adding that the administrative process takes time.

On Thursday, the government announced it would supply 27,000 housing units across three new public housing districts — in Gangseo in Seoul, Namyangju in Gyeonggi Province and Gwangju in Gyeonggi Province — and said it would announce an additional 73,000-plus units at a later date.