Seoul, the capital city of South Korea, is easily the most noticeable city of the country.

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        Seoul, the capital city of South Korea, is easily the most noticeable city of the country. Having been the capital of Korea for more than six hundred years, Seoul is the focal point of the country in politics, business, industry, education, et cetera (shown by figure 1). However, not many other cities in the world have gone through such radical changes in the last century. Only hundred years ago Seoul was very traditional; unlike the Japanese and the Chinese, Koreans obstinately refused to accept western culture. In just hundred years however, extreme reformations and miraculous economic development shaped Seoul to one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world. These changes, however, brought its harmful effects as well. Today, Seoul suffers many urban issues, such as land usage, housing, traffic, aging, and pollution/waste management. These problems naturally occur with urbanization in most other cities as well, but it is especially severe in Seoul since the city grew so much so quickly. However, Seoul’s administration realized the problems relatively early and the situation is generally improving now.

 

Area                                        Population

 

Gross Regional Product                        Banking Capacity

Figure 1: Pie graphs showing the influence of Seoul

Figure 2: Line graphs showing the population increase in Seoul and ratio to that of South Korea

        Seoul is the fourth most populated city in the world only behind Tokyo, Mexico City, and New York. According to figure 2, Seoul accounts for nearly one fourth the entire population in South Korea. Including its satellite cities, the population of the area is an astounding 46.3% of the entire population. Seoul’s population is also nearly three times to that of Busan, the second largest city. The population of a city is directly proportional to its sphere of influence, and this resulted in the large influx of migrants into Seoul during the 1960-1980 when the economy was booming. Seoul, however, is relatively small in its area being only 606 km2, which is even significantly less than Busan’s area of 760 km2. This results in a very high population density, which sums 16,965 people/km2. To picture how large this number is, take a look at figure 3. City-states such as Hong Kong or Singapore – known to be the countries with highest population density – only have 6,217 people/km2 and 6,050 people/km2 respectively. The fact that many parts of Seoul are mountainous and often inhabitable makes the case much worse. During the early stages of development in Seoul, this scarce environment, put together with huge immigration of people, resulted in uncontrollable expansion of the urban district, damaging farm lands and forests. To offset this unmanageable expansion outside city boundaries, the city administration devised a Basic Urban Plan in 1997. Seoul’s Basic Urban Plan – an urban planning system is similar to that of Japan - proposed Green Belts, restricting any development in that area. The government also realized that the main reason for this problem was such large influence Seoul had in the country, luring people from all over. To counterbalance this flow of people in only one direction, the government balanced the development in other regions as well. Today, the government is planning to relocate the political capital of the country to Daejon, which would also help slow down the growth of Seoul. As you can see from figure 2, these methods have worked somewhat lately in decreasing the population. In 2002, the number of emigrants (2,424,472) exceeded the number of immigrants (2,318,051).

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Seoul        

Hong Kong    

World average

Figure 3: Picture graph showing the population density of different areas

The overpopulation and poor land usage obviously leads to the next urban issue, housing. The housing problem in Seoul is a delicate issue. Knowing that the population density in Seoul was very high, city planners built the type of housing that could support a lot of people while taking up little amount of land. Seoul is filled with apartments, with enough housing for everyone, but there are still problems of people ...

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