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The story
On the 13th, the South Korean government announced it will gradually relocate 44 central government agencies, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of National Defense, from the capital Seoul to the central city of Sejong. The move is set to take place between 2027 and 2031, affecting roughly 10,000 civil servants. The Minister of the Interior and Safety explained the goal is to correct the excessive concentration of population and institutions in the greater Seoul area. On 5ch, users debated just how extreme Seoul’s over-concentration is, whether Sejong’s location makes sense given military tensions with North Korea, and whether Japan itself should finally do something about Tokyo’s own over-concentration.
South Korea to Relocate 44 Agencies, Including Foreign and Defense Ministries, to Sejong City — Easing Seoul’s Over-Concentration: Nikkei
Source: nikkei.com / Read the original article here
What people said
Interior and Safety Minister Yoon Ho-joong told a press conference, "This will overcome the over-concentration in the greater Seoul area and allow for balanced use of the country's land. It's a growth strategy that will lead to a new leap forward."
That's not happening — Japanese people are too stubborn and set in their ways for that
Real talk
So many problems would be solved by this alone
Say that and you get idiot local leaders swarming in shouting 'Osaka!' 'Fukuoka!' chasing their own vested interests
Seriously, how long is this armistice gonna last? Now that the North's gone nuclear, there's no way the war's restarting, so they should just officially end it and reconcile already
lol, and yet it's getting closer
About like the distance from Tokyo to Hamamatsu
The Nankai Trough earthquake is basically guaranteed within 30 years — what's the case for sticking with Tokyo??
Don't hear much about Astana — wonder how that's going.
And who knows what'll happen with Karakorum.
True
Nikkei's a great paper on everything except economics
Isn't that exactly why?
If the officials who can pull strings move there, companies will follow too. No idea what that does to the country's overall strength though
I think backing things up to Osaka and Fukuoka is the approach that actually fits Japan's current scale
Osaka would do just fine
Is Osaka even part of Japan?
Set up a few thousand entrances and exits
And a few hundred thousand air vents???
They already know the missiles are coming anyway
The only one who'd even get mad about it is the US
Heavy rain flooding, geothermal heat, and residents' vitamin D deficiency are the real obstacles to an underground city — and especially now that the internet's advanced enough that you could build a society where people never need to leave underground, that sounds like it'd cause brutal health problems
I sense a strong will of 'anywhere but Jeolla Province, even if it kills us' (Jeolla being a region of South Korea)
In Japan terms, that'd be like 60 million people crammed into Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba, and Saitama combined
Background and Key Points of the Debate
Sejong City has been undergoing phased functional relocation since 2012 as South Korea’s “administrative-centered multifunctional city,” and this latest move is an extension of that policy, with 44 agencies — including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of National Defense — and roughly 10,000 civil servants set to relocate between 2027 and 2031. While the thread title calls it a “capital relocation,” the presidential office and National Assembly will remain in Seoul, so strictly speaking this is a further decentralization of administrative functions rather than the capital itself moving wholesale. In the thread, opinions were divided: some argued that South Korea’s concentration in Seoul is more severe than Japan’s concentration in Tokyo, and that Japan should likewise disperse its functions given disaster risks such as the Nankai Trough earthquake, while others pushed back, pointing out that Japan already has a “secondary capital” plan underway for Osaka and Fukuoka, and that building an administrative city from scratch is inherently difficult.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Good News] South Korea Relocates Its Capital wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.”
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