Cho Kuk backs housing plan for Yongsan Park site, urges public debate and action

Cho Kuk, director of the Rebuilding Korea Party's Innovation Policy Research Institute, said Wednesday he supports Land Minister Kim Yun-deok's proposal to build housing on the Yongsan Park site, urging that the minister's idea move beyond a simple review and into public debate and concrete action.

Writing on his Facebook page Wednesday, Cho said Kim had recently stated he was "considering the Yongsan Park site as a potential residential development area," while Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon had come out against the idea, saying he "cannot agree to even 1 centimeter of damage to Yongsan Park, which belongs to future generations."

Cho said it was "truly deceptive" for Oh — whom he accused of long ignoring the desperate housing situation facing low-income, low-asset youth and households without homes — to now invoke future generations as a reason to protect every centimeter of the park. "This is an urgent situation where we must build high-quality public housing — even if just 1 square meter more — for future generations pushed to the edge of a housing cliff, and that is the responsibility of the state," he said.

He also argued that Yongsan Park in its current form is cut off by wide roads and barriers on all sides, making it "a vast, isolated island in the middle of the city that you have to make a deliberate trip to visit." A park is not automatically better just because it is large, he said, adding that the space should be reorganized efficiently so residents can use it with ease.

Cho revisited a proposal he had introduced at the February launch of the Rebuilding Korea Party's "New Land Public Concept Legislation Task Force," saying about 10,000 housing units could be supplied by using the peripheral land that makes up 20 percent of Yongsan Park's total area.

Even if the entire 20 percent of the peripheral land were used for public housing complexes for youth, Yongsan Park would still be the largest park in central Seoul, Cho said. He also proposed that housing be supplied primarily for younger residents while allowing multiple generations to live together, with a mix of high-rise towers and smaller mid-size units arranged in a complementary layout.

Regarding the Yongsan Children's Garden that the government has mentioned, Cho argued that a specialized youth rental housing complex should be built there first — a residential complex for young single residents and newlyweds, offering a range of unit sizes so that residents could continue living there after marriage and having children.

Cho also urged the National Assembly to take up legislative discussions on the matter. He called on the Assembly to approach an amendment to the Special Act on the Creation of Yongsan Park from a long-term perspective, and said exception provisions should be established to allow portions of the main Yongsan Park site to be used for residential development based on the government's policy judgment.

"This is not a call to develop all of Yongsan Park," he said. "Rather than reducing this core space in central Seoul to a binary choice between park and development, let us find a way for the finest youth public housing complex and the finest green space for citizens to coexist."

Meanwhile, the Rebuilding Korea Party plans to submit legislation related to the issue and to formally pursue discussions involving youth, civil society groups and experts.