Final Solution Lies in Returning to Administrative Capital

The Lee administration has finally made clear its intention to revise ― or scrap ― a plan to build an ``administration-oriented" city south of Seoul.

Prime Minister Chung Un-chan cited three reasons the government should not relocate nine ministries and two smaller agencies to the proposed Sejong City: lack of self-sufficiency, administrative inefficiency and the need to ``re-relocate" it after national unification.

Echoing this, President Lee Myung-bak presented three criteria in revising the plan to turn it into a research-industry-education complex: national competitiveness, regional development and the future of a unified Korea.

Their plan, however, has been failing to persuade even the minority faction within the ruling Grand National Party (GNP) led by Rep. Park Geun-hye, a former party leader considered to be the closest to the next presidency in most opinion polls, let alone opposition parties and residents in the scheduled site some 160 kilometers south of Seoul.

The government and GNP are facing an uphill battle, as the modification of the plan will require the revision of special laws, which will be all but impossible even for the majority party, without the cooperation from Rep. Park and her followers. In the worst-case scenario, this issue will likely split the country in two ― once again.

To make a long story short, we think all this wrangle ― which pits governing party against oppositionists, GNP mainstreamers against non-mainstreamers and Seoul against South Chungcheong Province ― stems from the Constitutional Court's implausible decision years ago. Citing the ``customary Constitution" in a country that has a written Constitution, the controversial top tribunal ruled, in effect, that Koreans have no other cities but Seoul as the nation's capital in their minds, resulting in a sharp scale-down of Sejong City.

So the solution is to go back to the original idea of administrative capital by inserting a clause into the Constitution that can override the court's unconstitutional ruling.

Government officials point out the problems in splitting the capital into two, citing the case of Germany, which moved back its capital from Bonn to Berlin. Korea should not necessarily be another Germany but rather a United States or Brazil, which have built successful administrative capitals in Washington D.C. and Brasilia. Seoul can remain as prosperous as ever, like New York and Rio de Janeiro.

President Lee also stresses the need to think a century ahead, but it defies our understanding why he thinks it would be good for the nation 100 years from now to let an over-burdened, over-crowded and over-polluted Seoul remain as the capital that sucks up all the nation's major functions of industry, culture and even administration ― except that it is located in the middle of the Korean Peninsula. Nor should there be any reason a nation's capital be at its geographical center.

Those who support the revision plan of Sejong City should ask themselves whether the reasons are for the nation or for themselves.

Seoul has been the center that represents everything Korean for centuries, but the time has long past for this country to cease to be the Republic of Seoul and become the Republic of Korea literally.