The largest urban planning project of South Korea is never going to be realized. Of course, I talk about the Yongsan International Business District, better known as Dream Hub. KORAIL announced that they won’t develop the land. The bought properties are going back to their former owners and the partners of Dream Hub project get their investment back. The project never made it out of the planning phase. However, the plans are pretty amazing and so I’ll try to show briefly a real estate developer’s dream.
Property development value of 31 trillion Korean Won (27-29 billion US Dollar) falls flat. A month ago KORAIL intended to downsize the project but that measure couldn’t save the development project. The total area for the project was 515.485 square meter large. 18 star architects have been involved in this project and there was a master plan for this whole area in the heart of Seoul. The design head was the world-famous Daniel Libeskind. The most impressive building would have been “Triple One”, a landmark of 620 m height.
Nine residential sky scrapers, six business complexes and six shopping malls were intented to fill the land. This ambitious plan was amazing and really gigantic. On the other hand, the downfall doesn’t result only from internal struggles or mismanagement. The whole idea of Dream Hub was too large and in a period of a weak global economy and falling real estate prices, the risk was too high.
The transport plan included bimodal trams, street cars and some sketches even a monorail. You can see the transport infrastructure in the following plan scheme:
Dream Hub isn’t only about money. People died in struggle for their homes. A documentary called “Two Doors” (두 개의 문) showed evictions of local residents. An accidental fire, while police carried out a forced eviction, led to the death of six people. KORAIL can expect a number of lawsuits from locals and from various Dream Hub investors.
After seven years of struggle between KORAIL and (changing) partners (among them was Samsung and at the end Lotte Tours), the Dream Hub project died. The big question now is how can KORAIL pay back all the money back? The rail company has already high debts and since eight years, they don’t make any profit. The news doesn’t speak of it, but I think that it will have effects on the rail infrastructure development. I suppose that KORAIL lost so much money that they won’t be able to finance any large-scale rail constructions. Another important question is: What’s going to happen with the land and who will take it over?
Sources and Related Links: Korea Joongang Daily | Korea Herald (1) | Korea Herald (2) | The Korea Times about ‘Two Doors’ | Dream Hub Official Page
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Another great and informative post, Nikkola. Thanks! It would be really great if an organization in Korea would put out independent movies--especially documentaries like "Two Doors," "The True Food Show," etc.--with subtitles in other languages so that those important films could be seen by expats in Korea as well as wider audiences throughout the world. It is sometimes possible to see select screenings of of smaller scale/budget films with subtitles (usually in English) at some venues, mostly in Seoul, but it is usually the blockbusters that get the subtitles. It would be great to actually be able to purchase small-budget, independent Korean movies to watch at home. Maybe someday! Anyway, thanks again for the great post, Nikkola.
Thanks for the kind words! That's sadly true. I think that the recognition for indie movies is very low in Korea, so they have even more problems to swap over into the English-speaking world. I'm a big fan of Korean cinema and nowadays I try to watch more indie stuff! There are so many great films and very important documentaries. What is "the True Food Show"? What's the Korean title?
I would love to see "Two Doors" and would need subs to understand it fully. I doubt it will ever get official subtitles but if the movie starts getting shared on Asian media (aka torrent) websites then maybe someone will step up and do a fan sub.
Scratch that, they did a release with English subs. Now if I can find the DVD we can see if they provided the subtitles there as well.
http://www.indieplus.or.kr/jsp2/index.jsp?SCode=510010&seq=3390&part=NO&subPart=&searchType=title&searchKeyword=&pageNum=8#
"Two Doors" was shown at "Indie Space" for several weeks but I missed it. They stopped screening the movie in January :( I heard a lot of good things about it.
"The True Food Show," also translated as "The True Taste Show" ( 트루맛쇼 in Korean) was a 2011 documentary about the collusion of broadcasting companies, middlemen, and restaurants in creating misleading restaurant features for TV shows in Korea. There's some good information in English, including an interview with the director of the film, at http://www.hancinema.net/korean_movie_The_True-taste_Show.php. I heard it screened with English subtitles under the title, "The True Food Show," at the Jeonju film festival in 2011, so maybe the subtitled version is out there somewhere...
Sounds interesting ;) Will try to watch this documentary!
Reblogged this on elegiacomo and commented:
Fascinating reading from a fascinating blog
I remember the demo and fire. I've seen the area in front of Yongsan slowly gutted and demolished over the course of several years. So now that the prostitutes and older buildings are gone, are there any plans for that land now? I also heard some of the construction was started but there were cracks in the concrete aka possibly bad construction. True? False? Any information on started construction? Thanks ^_^
I don't know about any new plans for Yongsan and even though the preparation of the construction places (=demolition of old buildings) took place, not a 1 cubic-cm of concrete was put somewhere.
I think you are probably confuing Yongsan with the Lotte World Tower, which is built in Jamsil. The Lotte World Tower showed some cracks on the lower floors but there aren't any safety issues (according to Lotte).
>I think you are probably confusing Yongsan with the Lotte World Tower...
-That makes sense. Thanks for the information :)