Will Saemangeum Become Dubai in Korea?
By Park Hyun-doo
President of Global Management Institute (GMI)
Korea must be proud of Saemanguem, the world largest land reclamation project ever. It is indeed a masterpiece, which took more than two decades of toil to embrace all possible human dreams and business opportunities. On the verge of completing the civil engineering work at Saemanguem, the fundamental question remains of how to utilize this newly created space to upgrade Korea as it moves toward globalization.
Saemangueum is located in the center of Northeast Asia, the most populated area in the world, which is reachable within two or three hours from the western coastline of mainland China and Japan. In view of this, 'Saemanguem' is a national asset providing Korea with additional land area two-thirds the size of Seoul that can be used for generating prosperity for Korea in the future.
Korea is one of the most densely populated countries in the world in comparable levels of industrialization and housing demand. The size of the peninsula together with the south and north is equivalent to the size of Minnesota. Minnesota has a population of 5.1 million. The combined population of north and South Korea is 72.3 million. In South Korea 49 million people inhabit 30 percent of the peninsula because the other 70 percent of is rugged terrain covered with mountains.
Considering the 21st century is an era of soft power, with a focus on health, arts, culture, knowledge, technology, value sharing and international exchange, this newly created land space can be used to build a contemporary city like 'Dubai' in the Middle East; a new dynamic center of Northeast Asia, which would be accessible to more populated economic powers in comparison with other parts of the world. This implies the potential use of the newly created Saemanguem could be used to overcome economic obstacles facing eco friendly Asian cities.
The location of Saemangeum can facilitate its use as a transportation hub for sea and air travel to the major cities in Asia. It can accommodate all forms of 21st century business activities combined with recreational facilities such as Palm Springs in California and West Palm Beach, Florida.
In other words, Saemanguem can host any enterprise utilizing the spirit of free entrepreneurship, which wants to do global business in the free market. This should be pertinent to those business entities in major Asian cities, which are already over saturated and structurally confined.
In short, a task of building a 'Dubai' in Saemanguem can be described as the creation of a 21st century type of fostering environment for contemporary metropolitan life ― an ultra modern business and resort town that existing major Asian cities such as Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing can not practically accommodate.
In the given situation that Saemanguem is not widely recognized as a global brand, the limited access to global capital resources makes it illusory to think a 'Dubai' type new city could be built there. In view of this, it is absolutely imperative to use the most well reputed global branded entrepreneurs who have already demonstrated their success in the major new cities. The recruitment of such city developers for the Samanguem project should include not only urban engineering architects, but also software designers to establish new business communities by maximizing the advantages of 'late comers' ― making short cuts to success by avoiding the repetition of trial and error of other urban developments.
Those global branded city developers would be the most effective people in mobilizing the necessary talent and resources to build a 'Dubai' type city in Saemanguem. More specifically, let these people spearhead the project and build a contemporary world city that envisions the future quality of life of human beings beyond 21st century.
By doing this, the dream of building a 'Dubai' in Samanguem will become a promising reality if we properly design a type of city that reflects soft power in freely accommodating cultural aspects, information and a knowledge based economy as well as technology for value sharing and international business operations in the most open and free society in the world.
For this purpose, the earliest possible conclusion of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) between Korea and the U.S., EU, Japan and China will help Saemanguem move to the center of the world economy. Above all, the dream of making 'Saegmanguem' as a Far Eastern Asian version of 'Dubai' can come true if the Lee Myung-bak administration can fulfill his promise of making Korea one of the most business friendly countries in the world.
The writer can be reached atgmikorea@empal.com