Cho Kuk calls for top-tier public rental housing on Korea Military Academy, Taereung golf course sites

Cho Kuk, head of the Rebuilding Korea Party's innovation policy research institute, said Tuesday that the sites of the Korea Military Academy and the Taereung golf course should be used to supply top-tier public rental housing, and that the Democratic Party of Korea would agree with the proposal.

In a Facebook post, Cho said reports had emerged that the Defense Ministry was pursuing a plan to relocate the Korea Military Academy to Sejong while leaving the naval and air force academies in place, and that Defense Minister Kang Shin-chul told the National Assembly's defense committee Monday that building apartments was "one of several options."

Cho said that if the academy's relocation goes ahead, the first priority should be a public discussion on how to return the site — a public asset — to the people, and that the Taereung golf course should be brought to the table at the same time.

Cho noted that the Lee Jae Myung government had already announced in its Jan. 29 housing measures this year a plan to build 6,800 units on the Taereung golf course site. "If the Korea Military Academy relocation secures the land, the golf course and the academy site should not be developed separately — the two parcels should be planned together as a single urban district from the outset," Cho said. Cho added that he had proposed using the site at a New Year's press briefing earlier this year, and on Feb. 2 unveiled supply plans and renderings for the Yongsan Park area, the Seocho-dong legal district and the Taereung area at the launch of the Rebuilding Korea Party's new land public concept legislation task force.

Cho said the Korea Military Academy site, at 670,000 square meters, and the Taereung golf course, at 830,000 square meters, together have enough area to accommodate about 30,000 units — roughly 2.5 times the scale of Olympic Park Foreon in Gangdong-gu, Seoul, the largest single complex in the country at 12,032 units. "At the time, I proposed building not only small and mid-sized specialized rental housing centered on one- and two-person youth households, but also a top-tier care-integrated residential complex for all generations," Cho said.

Cho said there was one precondition: the preservation of the Taereung and Gangneung royal tombs, UNESCO World Heritage sites. "The forest surrounding the royal tombs, which have stood here for more than 450 years, must be protected without damage. Buildings should be lower and wider the closer they are to the tombs, their height and placement must conform to the standards of the World Heritage Impact Assessment, and the Taereung area suffers from severe traffic congestion, so a major expansion of transport infrastructure is essential," Cho said.

Cho said the Democratic Party would agree with the proposal, pointing to Lee Jae Myung's campaign pledges during the 2022 presidential election to supply 100,000 units of "youth basic housing" on part of Yongsan Park and surrounding returned land, and 20,000 units on state-owned land including Taereung, Hongneung and Changdong. "Now it is time to act," Cho said.

Cho said supply alone was not the answer — what mattered was the kind of supply. "Supply must come as a series of bold moves in both scale and quality. Half-hearted supply plans will not earn the public's patience, and the real estate market looks down on anything 'public.' We must build large-scale, top-tier public housing in the heart of the city that young people, ordinary citizens and the middle class all want to live in," Cho said.

Cho also said the Democratic Party should not be trying to win Seoul voters by expanding the scope of the comprehensive real estate tax cut — unifying the basic deduction at 1.4 billion won ($1.03 million) regardless of whether the owner is a resident — but should instead stake its political fortunes on creating large-scale public rental housing complexes of this kind.