Korea’s innovation city dream stumbles on poor planning and policy drift
A few cars pass through a road in Chungbuk Innovation City, located between Eumseong and Jincheon counties, on the afternoon of June 4. Hardly any people were seen while the photographer briefly pulled over to take this photo. Korea Times photo by Oh Ji-hye
After 20 years, innovation cities fall short of balanced development goals
On a hot Wednesday morning, the streets of Eumseong, North Chungcheong Province, were nearly silent. Pulling over along a four-lane road near town, the only movement visible through the car window came from a few construction vehicles. At the nearby bus stop, neither bus nor passengers appeared.
When asked for lunch recommendations nearby, a restaurant staffer waved her hand dismissively. “The nearest market is more than 15 minutes by car. In this heat, just find a cafe.”
Despite housing 11 public institutions related to education and information and communication technology, and employing over 3,000 people, the so-called Chungbuk Innovation City in Eumseong felt like an empty hallway between classes.
Kim Jang-hyun (alias), 37, who worked here for eight years, said this was nothing new. “On weekdays, you see people inside the buildings. But come the weekend, half the city disappears,” he said. “Most people commute from outside or leave every weekend for Seoul or Sejong.”
Public facilities are few, culture almost nonexistent. There are no parks or cultural facilities, nowhere to spend time. “From what I’ve seen, families stay while their kids are in elementary school, but most leave once they get older, mainly because of education,” Kim said.
Streets appear deserted in Chungbuk Innovation City on June 4. Korea Times photo by Oh Ji-hye
From promise to plateau
It’s been six years since Korea completed relocating 112 public institutions to 10 innovation cities nationwide.
Initially pitched as a three-stage plan — relocate government bodies, attract businesses and universities, and build regional innovation clusters — the initiative largely stalled after the first phase.
Only 40 percent of relocated employees move there with their families; the rest live apart or commute from other cities, according to 2024 data from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.
A government survey shared with Hankook Ilbo shows residents’ satisfaction with living conditions remains stagnant, scoring 69.4 out of 100, throughout the 2020s.
The lowest score went to transportation (62.3), followed by childcare and education (66.3). A lack of mobility, school options and adult learning opportunities remains a major barrier to settlement.
Korea’s innovation cities were supposed to function as engines of balanced national development. But the gears of population inflow, infrastructure, economic growth and rising local incomes are misaligned and spinning separately.
Politics over policy
According to Seong Kyoung-ryung, president of Sangji University and former chair of the Presidential Committee for Balanced National Development, who helped design the innovation city strategy two decades ago, local leaders were more focused on political gain than policy alignment.
“I met mayors and lawmakers who only wanted to talk about land development and apartment construction. They were already planning their next campaigns,” he recalled.
The looming threat of regional extinction failed to register with the political mainstream, which was preoccupied with winning votes in the short term. In that climate, relocating public institutions was only the beginning — real innovation would require collaboration with local industries and research institutions, but such calls fell on deaf ears.
Seong said he tried to persuade stakeholders, but admitted that both the administration and the committee itself were constrained by the limits of their political terms.
As administrations changed, so did priorities. The Lee Myung-bak administration abandoned regional balance in favor of strengthening Seoul’s global competitiveness. Public agency relocations slowed dramatically, and only 4 of 112 agencies met the 2012 relocation goal.
Presidential involvement also declined sharply. While the Roh Moo-hyun administration convened 72 committee meetings (with 40 percent chaired by the president), subsequent presidents rarely attended.
Only one or two meetings were chaired by the president during the Park Geun-hye and Moon Jae-in years.
Construction is underway at the Chungbuk Innovation City site in Jincheon and Eumseong on July 17, 2011. Korea Times file
Buildings without purpose
By the end of 2019, public agency relocations were complete. The presence of these agencies did help young people in the regions by creating more job options. However, the hoped-for ripple effects, like collaborative research or local industry development, failed to materialize.
“Most of these institutions are just carrying on their national-level tasks as they always have,” said Lee Sang-ho, a researcher at the Korea Employment Information Service. “There’s no real engagement with local ecosystems.”
More than half of the 3.14 trillion won ($2.3 billion) spent on regional development by 150 public institutions in 2023 went toward purchasing local goods, often the lowest form of regional engagement.
Local governments, now tasked with providing ongoing program budgets for facilities built with central funding, often find themselves unable to sustain operations. One birth support center built with national funds sits unused due to a lack of staff and programming budget.
A fragmented approach
The decision to establish 10 innovation cities nationwide was driven more by local political demands than strategic logic. Regional jealousy forced the government to allocate resources equally rather than effectively.
Ha Soo-jung, a researcher at the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements, agreed that having 10 innovation cities across the country may be excessive given Korea’s land area.
“If we had concentrated support on just two or three hub cities, there would have been inevitable backlash — people asking why only certain areas were favored,” she said. “That’s how we ended up spreading the budget evenly, like slicing a pie into equal pieces.”
Still, she said a more targeted approach was necessary. With 131 public institutions scattered across the 10 innovation cities and Sejong, it became difficult to achieve economies of scale. In other words, these cities lacked the critical mass needed toadvi function as true regional hubs.
As the limited budget was divided thinly, the impact diminished. Meanwhile, the Seoul metropolitan area continued to surge ahead, drawing in talent and capital at an accelerating pace.
Seong Kyoung-ryung, president of Sangji University, speaks during an interview on June 6. Korea Times photo by Wang Tae-seok
Final chance at relevance
Kim Jong-han, a former government adviser on balanced development, likened the current state of Korea’s regional development policy to “a ship with its last air pocket, on the verge of suffocation.”
With the Lee Jae-myung administration pledging additional public sector relocations, debate is reigniting over whether to expand existing innovation cities or start anew.
Some view the innovation city project as a “half success,” crediting it for slowing youth outmigration.
But finding comfort in partial success, experts warn, risks turning the entire project into “a sandcastle in the desert,” as Song Woo-kyung, head of the regional development center at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade, put it.
If Korea misses what may be its final chance to realign innovation cities with their original mission as engines of balanced growth, the consequences could be severe.
“If all we do again is relocate public institutions,” said Seong, the former balanced development chief, “it will end up as nothing more than a real estate development scheme.”
This article from the Hankook Ilbo, a sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.