Oh Se-hoon calls Cultural Heritage Administration's review process 'obstruction in bureaucratic clothing'

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon on Thursday vowed not to stand by as residents' lives are "held hostage indefinitely under the guise of heritage protection," responding to a statement from the Cultural Heritage Administration calling for an end to "unproductive conflict" over the Sewoon Zone 4 redevelopment project.

In a Facebook post Thursday, Oh said "the greatest enemy of national heritage today is none other than the Cultural Heritage Administration itself."

Oh described the Sewoon Zone 4 project — located across from Jongmyo Shrine — as an effort to rebuild a deteriorating urban area and open a green corridor from Jongmyo to Namsan. "It was designated a maintenance zone in 2004, but not a single shovel has broken ground in 22 years," he said. "Now the Cultural Heritage Administration has put a lock on the gate."

Oh said the zone lies outside the World Heritage buffer area, yet the agency had "pushed an unreasonable demand for a Heritage Impact Assessment with no legal obligation, and even called for the cancellation of project authorization." He added that the agency had deferred the buried cultural heritage review — a mandatory step before construction — for three consecutive months in August, September and October. "First they said they would reconsider once the revised project plan was finalized. Then they said an on-site survey was needed," he said. "Once the survey was done, they came back with a principle of in-situ preservation, insisting artifacts must remain exactly where they are — even though the very first review in 2024 had approved partial relocation. Can you hand a whistle to a referee who moves the goalposts every time the ball goes in?"

Oh said the agency had effectively admitted it lacked any clear standards. "In January this year, they said they planned to formally request a Heritage Impact Assessment under domestic law once the enforcement decree was revised within the first quarter," he said. "Then on Wednesday they issued a statement saying they would establish management standards going forward. That is a confession that they have been tying residents' hands all along with no legal basis and no criteria."

"This kind of review cannot be called a review," Oh said. "It is obstruction dressed up as administration. The Cultural Heritage Administration must stop this obstruction immediately and conduct its reviews on the basis of proper legal grounds and reasonable standards."

The Cultural Heritage Administration had issued its statement after Oh criticized the agency's Heritage Impact Assessment demands as "administrative gapjil" at a forum on Tuesday. The agency said the assessment "is not a regulation to block development, but a system for seeking rational coexistence between heritage conservation and development projects," and urged Seoul and other relevant agencies to "join us in a spirit of respect and cooperation." At the Tuesday forum, "World Heritage Conservation and the Future of the City: Finding a Path to Coexistence," Oh had said the agency "must not halt the future of the city and the lives of its citizens with no clear standards, principles or legal basis under the pretext of protecting cultural heritage," calling it "a clear case of administrative gapjil lacking any legal foundation."