Seoul unveils master plan to transform Yeouido Park into cultural hub

A conceptual rendering of the redeveloped Yeouido Park / Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Government

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced a comprehensive master plan to redevelop Yeouido Park, aiming to transition the aging 48-acre green space into a culturally integrated waterfront landmark by 2030.

A consortium led by local landscape architecture firm Saram And Namu won the city's design competition with a proposal titled "Cultivating Yeouido Park Together." The blueprint uses a spatial philosophy of emptying and filling to seamlessly connect the financial district of Yeouido with the adjacent Han River and Saetgang tributary, erasing the stark concrete borders that currently isolate the park.

The revamp is timed to coincide with the construction of the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts II, a major secondary municipal cultural complex slated to break ground inside the park limits in 2027.

"The winning design establishes an organic relationship between the urban streetscape and the natural park boundaries," said professor Kwon Jin-wook of Yeungnam University, head of the evaluation panel, praising its balance of open vistas and urban integration.

The master plan reconfigures the park into three concentric layers.

At its core sits the "Yeoui Field," an expansive, open lawn designed to host large-scale public festivals and serve as a central visual axis linking the new performing arts center to the park's existing ecological forest. Flanking this central pasture will be two parallel linear parks running east to west, built to draw pedestrian traffic from the surrounding financial sector directly into the park’s recreational spaces. The layout also features the "Grand Hill" and "Grand Pond," which use natural terrain gradients to bridge the elevation gap between the performing arts center and the green space.

To manage operations, Seoul plans to establish the "Yeouido Park Conservancy," a public-private governance framework allowing corporate entities headquartered in the financial hub of Yeouido to fund specific environmental programs to meet sustainability goals, while residents participate in horticultural upkeep.

Design work begins this month, with phased construction running from 2027 through 2030 to minimize disruption. The city will display the blueprints at Seoul City Hall for one week.

This article was published with the assistance of generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.