Prime Minister Chung Un-chan is probably the busiest man in town now, as he tries to sell the controversial Sejong City to businesses and universities.
Some reports say the government has already set its ``big-3" targets for relocation ― Samsung and LG groups as well as Seoul National University ― to turn the supposedly administrative town into an industry-academy complex. Chung himself says a few smaller business groups have all but decided to move to the city some 160 km south of Seoul.
The economist-turned-premier says the original plan of the administrative city will lead to inefficiency by splitting the government in two. People need to hear Chung's answer on two points, then: First, does the government think corporate inefficiency is not a problem at all? Second, why should taxpayers shoulder the additional burden caused by the coerced relocation of businesses that receive all kinds of special favors?
Faced with protests from other cities designated earlier as centers for industrial innovation or free economic activity against the concentration of special favors, Chung has reportedly told his aides to call Sejong an ``economic city" instead of a ``corporate city."
The government's word play does not stop there. Officials deny that these are not ``special favors" but ``incentives" and Sejong City's ``revision plan" ― from administration to business ― is actually its ``development plan."
However, there is one word play that should never be permitted ― the denigration of opponents' calls for sticking to the original administrative city plan as a ``populist move" by some officials in the government and ruling Grand National Party. What kind of linguistic ― or political ― distortion can let demands to keep a promise to the people be called populism? These officials may have to take more responsibility for destroying the purity of language than the national land.
As we have repeatedly said, all this excess and distortion stems from the recalcitrance of President Lee Myung-bak and his followers in the establishment against moving the administrative center away from Seoul. But Korea is probably the only country in the world that has nearly half ― 48 percent, to be exact ― of its population in the capital city and its vicinity, which accounts for only 14 percent of national land. This is far higher than the comparable rate of 33 percent in Tokyo and 18 percent in Paris.
The leviathan sprawl of Seoul is smothering both the capital itself and the rest of the country ― not just right now but over the past six centuries in some ways.
It's true the splitting of the government would result in inefficiency, but the alternative should not be another half-baked industrial city. Instead, the government should return as closely as possible to the original idea of building an administrative capital ― by expelling the ``customary" Constitution that only Seoul should be the capital of Korea from their minds and revising the written one.
President Lee says he would have little to lose by following the previous administration's plan, but he simply had to revise it ``for the sake of his conscience" and the ``nation's future 100 years down the road." A widespread popular suspicion, however, is that Lee wants to leave his own legacy in major projects that change the surface of the national land rather than inheriting his predecessor's original pledge made to the people.
If this is the case, he should change the name of the city, so that it never mentions King Sejong, the most democratic monarch in the nation's history who respected the wishes of his people.