Seoulites and tourists primarily associate Yongsan Park with the National Museum of Korea. Located in the middle of the southernmost strip of the park, it attracts the third highest number of annual visitors in the world.

Walking up to the front affords quite a sight. A lone pavilion, with its rooftop faded in jade green, stands in a tree-lined pond. Trace the gaze upward, and there’s the rectangular gap in the museum’s superstructure of concrete covered in granite framing the beautiful expanse of greenery opening up to Namsan Mountain and Namsan Tower. At the back of the premise is a children’s garden, filling the air around the museum with laughter and scampering footsteps.

This break from the city’s noise and visual fatigue is thanks to the fact that it used to be Yongsan Garrison. In 1953, the United States 8th Army moved into what is today Yongsan Park  – only a tiny portion is open to the public so far – to deter North Korea. In 1957, the United Nations Command also relocated next to the U.S. base from Tokyo. This 630-acre post, plus Itaewon just outside of the garrison, had become a little America in the heart of Seoul.

It remained untouched until 1989, when then-South Korean President Roh Tae-woo and U.S. President George H. W. Bush got into a chopper and circled over Yongsan Garrison. The view reportedly convinced Bush to agree that “there shouldn’t be foreign troops in the middle of a state’s capital.” 

The next year, Washington and Seoul signed an agreement to relocate the U.S. forces somewhere else. Successive South Korean governments then framed the matter of nudging U.S. soldiers out of Seoul as reviving national pride. After much dithering, it was finally decided in 2004 that Camp Humphreys, an hour drive south of Seoul, would absorb Yongsan forces. 

What would be become of the newly vacated land in Seoul?

The Roh Moo-hyun administration legislated the 2007 Special Act on the Creation of Yongsan Park. The act bound the government to develop the land to be returned from the United States “into a place for leisure and relaxation as well as a natural and ecological space.” It also barred development of the area into anything other than a park.

However, the base territory has changed hands at a painfully slow pace. Although most U.S. personnel and military materiel vacated Yongsan to Camp Humphreys, Washington has coughed up only some 30 percent of the land. The handover of the rest awaits talks on recompensation, environmental inspections, and cleanup. 

But its fate is already generating controversy.

In mid-August, the Lee administration kicked up an intense public uproar with its controversial idea to build housing in the Yongsan complex. “Yongsan is so huge … There are places where I think we can build housing,” said the president’s economic development guru in a radio appearance. He then floated the idea of building apartment complexes in the children’s garden section of Yongsan Park. 

The land and infrastructure ministry followed up with its announcement that it would survey where to build new housing in the park, particularly those areas already razed to the ground by the U.S. military. 

This was all in response to President Lee Jae-myung’s exhortation to his aides on August 13 to “devote all available resources and capabilities to solving housing problems that threaten people’s livelihood and the state’s future.” Indeed, South Korea’s real estate investment and redevelopment frenzy has jacked up housing prices for decades. In a country where owning a flat is a prerequisite for marriage, this has been one of the many factors driving down birthrates. And the increasing inequality in wealth determined by real estate ownership isn’t a tenable social reality. 

So, the Lee administration has implemented a slew of policies meant to deter frenetic property purchases. Two of these particularly attracted opprobrium. First, shrinking the proportion of a loan homebuyers can secure out of the total property value has forced them to look to leases. Higher demand for leases led to higher rent and premiums (an upfront lump-sum payment for granting a lease). But now, there’s even a shortage of leases. 

Second, the government proposed increasing the cap on the real estate holding tax and the market valuation rates uses to assess property value for tax purposes.

Together, these policies had the effect of alienating most Seoul residents, both tenants and homeowners. Polls in mid-August showed that Lee’s approval rating fell below the 50 percentage mark for the first time since his term began. The housing crisis and prosecutorial reform were cited as the two major reasons. Among young residents in Seoul, Lee’s performance was abysmal, at 31 percent.

There is no question that more affordable housing is needed, which is why the government pledged to lay the groundwork for about 1.5 million new publicly funded flats during Lee’s term. That’s also why the Lee administration bucked the liberal regimes’ historical stance against bulldozing greenbelts – and whether Yongsan Park should become part of this plan is now a raging debate.

The government’s urgency is understandable, but the park should be inviolable. Seoul needs a breathing space. The only silver lining in the U.S. Army’s use of the base was that it saved a huge chunk in the heart of Seoul from the city’s unrestrained development and construction before the concept of landscape urbanism –  that greenery and ecosystem should inform architectural plans – was even a thing in South Korea. Seoul needs something akin to New York’s Central Park and London’s Hyde Park and Regent’s Park. Yongsan Park, once Washington returns more plots, could be larger and play vastly a positive role. As the lungs of the city, the park could nurture precious ecology, dampen heat waves, and add social value as a shared natural space.

Also, Yongsan Park should be preserved and developed into a full-blown park for symbolic and historical reasons. The location represents the country’s painful history, independence, and modernity.

Empires of old dug in their heels here. In the 13th century, Mongols occupied the area for their war against Korea. In the 17th century, China’s Qing Dynasty quartered their soldiers here, from which they trafficked 5 percent of the Korean population. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Imperial Japan’s soldiers sojourned here, conscripting and training and sending Koreans to their deaths in Japan’s far-flung wars. And then the United States took over the base in 1945. 

It has also been Korea’s gateway to the world. Owing to its centrality and proximity to the Han River and Namsan Mountain, foreign tourists and traders have converged here since medieval times. Goods crisscrossing the country passed through Yongsan’s barter shops and entry routes. Since the late 19th century, it was through here that Koreans introduced modernity, be it steamboats and trams, or multiculturalism and artistic development.

It is time now for South Koreans to savor this space. It should not be turned into apartment complexes. 

The Lee administration said that the vast majority of the park will be spared. But apartment complexes mean auxiliary infrastructure. Roads have to be laid down. Malls and schools have to be built. Carving the park this way ruins the last precious chance to rectify Seoul’s cramped landscape and restore biological diversity.

Seoul’s mayor Oh Se-hoon is locking horns with the government over this issue.

“History won’t forgive me for allowing even a small portion of the park to be turned into apartment sites,” Oh said in a video he filmed at the park. “We need to preserve Yongsan’s history and nature for the future generations,” he added. 

He’s not alone. The most recent survey released on August 24 found that two out of three Seoulites are against the government proposal. The Seoul Metropolitan Government has been holding a series of talks with the government to persuade the latter of alternatives.

It’s worth remembering that in 2016, the Park Geun-hye administration wanted to build a couple of museums in the park. It was pelted with public outrage for even broaching the idea of pouring concrete in this historical land. The government backed down.

What Seoul needs isn’t traditional housing reconstruction and redevelopment practices, still less marring Yongsan Park for drab, high-rise apartments. It needs a complete regeneration plan that would organically connect residential, commercial, and recreational spaces. Simply put, dilapidated housing in low-density areas should be incorporated into large-scale mixed-use development. Some of the city’s commercial and recreational needs should be moved underground. And all these should be seamlessly accessed through ingenious infrastructure and transportation planning.

In the meantime, the government had better expedite their negotiation with Washington for a quicker transfer of land within Yongsan Garrison, as promised well over three decades ago.