People Power Party lawmaker Kwon Young-se said Thursday that the Armed Forces Financial Management Corps site on Gyeongnidan-gil in Itaewon could serve as a viable alternative for housing development. "It is essentially a military barracks building, so it can be torn down and rebuilt easily — even within a year," he said.
Kwon, who represents Yongsan-gu, made the remarks on SBS Radio, saying Yongsan Park presented far greater obstacles. "Yongsan Park has not even been returned yet, and even if it were, environmental remediation would take an enormous amount of time," he said.
Kwon said his opposition to using the park for housing was not driven by constituency interests. "It is not that I am against it because it is my district — Yongsan Park should remain a park for Seoul and for all of South Korea," he said. He added that Yongsan-gu already had more than 40,000 units in the pipeline through redevelopment and reconstruction projects, which would result in a net increase of at least 10,000 apartment units on the supply side.
He also noted that the legal framework protecting the park was put in place deliberately. "The reason the Roh Moo-hyun administration enshrined it as a park under the Yongsan Park Act was precisely to prevent it from being torn up and used whenever there is a temporary surge in real estate demand," he added.
Kwon said the scale of any housing development at Yongsan Children's Garden would itself be problematic, and that the timeline for the rest of the park remained deeply uncertain. "No one knows when the remaining land will be returned, and no one knows how long environmental cleanup will take after that — it could drag on indefinitely," he said.
Turning to internal party affairs, Kwon said the People Power Party needed to demonstrate accountability ahead of future elections. "To win the next general election and the presidential election after that, our party needs to boldly take responsibility for what we are responsible for, show that we have genuinely changed, and present a reinvigorated image under new leadership as we head into those contests — that is what is best for our party," he said.
On the party leadership's push to replace local constituency committee chairs, Kwon said the move was ill-timed. "At a time when so many disputes and conflicts are playing out inside the National Assembly, trying to undercut those people is not the right direction," he said.
He also said calls for PPP leader Jang Dong-hyeok to step down deserved to be heard. "It is clearly meaningful to put on record that voices calling for his resignation exist in multiple corners of our party," Kwon said. "We need to show that our party is not full of people who are indifferent to such things."
mp1256@heraldcorp.com
