By Park Moo-jong
Almost all the major world cities have a traditional opera house, which are favorite tourist destinations
They are, to name a few, La Scala in Milan, the Sydney Opera House, the Royal Opera House in London, the Lincoln Center in New York City, Le Grand Opera in Paris, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires and the Bolshoi in Moscow.
Seoul has one opera house in the Seoul Arts Center, but it is hard to compare it with the foreign ones in terms of scale, facilities and quality of performances.
The term opera house reminds many of the Sydney Opera House, one of the 20th century's most famous and distinctive buildings as well as one of Australia's most popular tourist attractions _ more than 8 million people visit annually.
It hosts well over 3,000 performances every year, attended by more than 2 million music fans.
When it was inaugurated in 1973 and soon became one of the world's most popular tourist attractions, many Korean music lovers, including myself, were envious of Australians, asking ourselves: "When will we be able to have such a fantastic thing?"
Thirty-one years later in 2004, then Seoul City Mayor Lee Myung-bak (who was elected president in 2007) announced an "ambitious" plan to build an "international-level" opera house on Nodeul Island in the Han River, under Hangang Bridge just south of Yongsan.
The next year, City Hall bought the then privately owned islet for 27.4 billion won (approximately $24 million) and chose a design by a French architecture firm through an international contest.
The design cost 27.7 billion won.
Then, the next mayor elected in 2006, Oh Se-hoon, announced the "Han River Renaissance" project featuring the construction of an opera house with 1,500 seats at the cost of 450 billion won (about $40 million).
Unfortunately, however, the then-opposition-led City Council cut the budget and the project has been left adrift.
After Oh stepped down in 2011, one year after he was re-elected, new Mayor Park Won-soon put the brakes on, citing the lack of a budget and social consensus.
And then, Park came up with a "bizarre" idea of using the island as a "citizen's veggie patch." The city government allowed about 600 individuals and seven urban farming groups to follow the plough there as a "symbol of urban agriculture."
The island really has an unfortunate destiny.
It was not a natural one. The island, called earlier "Jungji-do," was created in 1917 when the then Japanese colonial government general of Korea built the first bridge over the Han River's, dubbed "Hangang Indo-gyo" (Han River pedestrian bridge), connecting Yongsan in the north and Noryangjin in the south.
The artificial islet had a wide white sand beach until the 1970s on the Yongsan side, which used to be one of the most popular summer places in the metropolitan area.
People over 60 well remember a "historic incident" that took place on the Hangang Baeksajang (Han River White Sand Beach) on May 3, 1956.
More than 400,000 people jampacked the beach to hear a speech by the then opposition presidential candidate Shin Ik-hee (1894-1956) running against then-President Syngman Rhee (1875-1965). At that time, Seoul had a population of 1.5 million. (Shin died of a heart attack two days later on May 5, 10 days ahead of the voting day in a train going to North Jeolla Province.)
The beach vanished after the Han River Development Project was completed in 1986 following four years of work to "use the space along the river for multiple purposes" such as the construction of the Olympic Expressway, among others.
In fact, the opera house project has been almost forgotten in recent years, while Mayor Park's ambitious plan for urban farming in the center of the city has made the island a deserted space due to the indifference of citizens.
Finally, the project was abandoned once and for all on June 7 by the city's Urban Planning Committee. Instead, the committee endorsed a plan, adopted through an international competition, to make the island a cultural complex comprising a performance arena, park, shopping mall, cafes and biological education facility.
Pro and con discussions about the opera house construction on the islet were hot from the early stages. Opponents claimed such a facility was too luxurious for low-income citizens who struggled to pay less than 10,000 won to view a movie, and the cost was too high.
By scrapping the project, the city government lost a huge amount of money _ the 27.7 billion won (about $24.3 million) paid for the design.
Who shall take responsibility for the loss of so much money from the citizens' taxes?
Over the past decade, city officials and related experts visited opera houses in Europe and must have learned "knowhow" about the construction and management of such a cultural facility.
One of the "deep-rooted evils" President Moon Jae-in vows to eradicate for sure is the "political purpose" to make little of what one's predecessor achieved or planned to do and instead to start his or her "new" vanity projects.
Politics should not stand in the way of culture and the arts.
Seoul is an international megacity, ranked around 10th in the world economically. Such a capital needs an independent opera house that can suit its class. Seeing the picture of the shell roof of the Sydney Opera House now saddens me.
Park Moo-jong is the Korea Times advisor. He served as the president-publisher of the nation's first English newspaper from 2004 to 2014 after he worked as a reporter of the daily since 1974. He can be reached at moojong@ktimes.com or emjei29@gmail.com.
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They are, to name a few, La Scala in Milan, the Sydney Opera House, the Royal Opera House in London, the Lincoln Center in New York City, Le Grand Opera in Paris, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires and the Bolshoi in Moscow.
Seoul has one opera house in the Seoul Arts Center, but it is hard to compare it with the foreign ones in terms of scale, facilities and quality of performances.
The term opera house reminds many of the Sydney Opera House, one of the 20th century's most famous and distinctive buildings as well as one of Australia's most popular tourist attractions _ more than 8 million people visit annually.
It hosts well over 3,000 performances every year, attended by more than 2 million music fans.
When it was inaugurated in 1973 and soon became one of the world's most popular tourist attractions, many Korean music lovers, including myself, were envious of Australians, asking ourselves: "When will we be able to have such a fantastic thing?"
Thirty-one years later in 2004, then Seoul City Mayor Lee Myung-bak (who was elected president in 2007) announced an "ambitious" plan to build an "international-level" opera house on Nodeul Island in the Han River, under Hangang Bridge just south of Yongsan.
The next year, City Hall bought the then privately owned islet for 27.4 billion won (approximately $24 million) and chose a design by a French architecture firm through an international contest.
The design cost 27.7 billion won.
Then, the next mayor elected in 2006, Oh Se-hoon, announced the "Han River Renaissance" project featuring the construction of an opera house with 1,500 seats at the cost of 450 billion won (about $40 million).
Unfortunately, however, the then-opposition-led City Council cut the budget and the project has been left adrift.
After Oh stepped down in 2011, one year after he was re-elected, new Mayor Park Won-soon put the brakes on, citing the lack of a budget and social consensus.
And then, Park came up with a "bizarre" idea of using the island as a "citizen's veggie patch." The city government allowed about 600 individuals and seven urban farming groups to follow the plough there as a "symbol of urban agriculture."
The island really has an unfortunate destiny.
It was not a natural one. The island, called earlier "Jungji-do," was created in 1917 when the then Japanese colonial government general of Korea built the first bridge over the Han River's, dubbed "Hangang Indo-gyo" (Han River pedestrian bridge), connecting Yongsan in the north and Noryangjin in the south.
The artificial islet had a wide white sand beach until the 1970s on the Yongsan side, which used to be one of the most popular summer places in the metropolitan area.
People over 60 well remember a "historic incident" that took place on the Hangang Baeksajang (Han River White Sand Beach) on May 3, 1956.
More than 400,000 people jampacked the beach to hear a speech by the then opposition presidential candidate Shin Ik-hee (1894-1956) running against then-President Syngman Rhee (1875-1965). At that time, Seoul had a population of 1.5 million. (Shin died of a heart attack two days later on May 5, 10 days ahead of the voting day in a train going to North Jeolla Province.)
The beach vanished after the Han River Development Project was completed in 1986 following four years of work to "use the space along the river for multiple purposes" such as the construction of the Olympic Expressway, among others.
In fact, the opera house project has been almost forgotten in recent years, while Mayor Park's ambitious plan for urban farming in the center of the city has made the island a deserted space due to the indifference of citizens.
Finally, the project was abandoned once and for all on June 7 by the city's Urban Planning Committee. Instead, the committee endorsed a plan, adopted through an international competition, to make the island a cultural complex comprising a performance arena, park, shopping mall, cafes and biological education facility.
Pro and con discussions about the opera house construction on the islet were hot from the early stages. Opponents claimed such a facility was too luxurious for low-income citizens who struggled to pay less than 10,000 won to view a movie, and the cost was too high.
By scrapping the project, the city government lost a huge amount of money _ the 27.7 billion won (about $24.3 million) paid for the design.
Who shall take responsibility for the loss of so much money from the citizens' taxes?
Over the past decade, city officials and related experts visited opera houses in Europe and must have learned "knowhow" about the construction and management of such a cultural facility.
One of the "deep-rooted evils" President Moon Jae-in vows to eradicate for sure is the "political purpose" to make little of what one's predecessor achieved or planned to do and instead to start his or her "new" vanity projects.
Politics should not stand in the way of culture and the arts.
Seoul is an international megacity, ranked around 10th in the world economically. Such a capital needs an independent opera house that can suit its class. Seeing the picture of the shell roof of the Sydney Opera House now saddens me.
Park Moo-jong is the Korea Times advisor. He served as the president-publisher of the nation's first English newspaper from 2004 to 2014 after he worked as a reporter of the daily since 1974. He can be reached at moojong@ktimes.com or emjei29@gmail.com.
