Yesterday my aunt published a proposed vision for Sejong city in Joongang Ilbo (in Korean), which is an extremely hot issue in Korea right now. Long story short, there is much debate over whether to move the capital to a newly built city. But regardless, the vision is about what the city could and should look like, given the vast resources that will be poured into it.
Below is an extended version of the vision.
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City of Righteousness
A blueprint for Sejong City
By
Ji Hoon Hong & Myung-Soo Lee
Summary
The authors propose that Sejong City be established as Korea’s national hub for global interface with a comprehensive intellectual and physical infrastructure for economic and policy assistance to developing countries and also as Korea’s leading platform for understanding and appreciation of an increasingly multi-ethnic and multi-cultural composition of the Korean population. This dual functionality would propel Sejong City as the national carrier of the global banner for new and benevolently influential Korea.
Discussion
The purpose and scope of Sejong City has recently been a topic of intense debate and political discourse in Korea. While Sejong City was originally intended to accommodate, and be centered around, a number of national government agencies, President Lee Myung-Bak recently reversed that view and completely ruled out any re-location of major national government agency to Sejong City. While the precise nature of an alternative vision for Sejong City is yet to be finalized, this reversal has generated a strong opposition and an extensive debate on the future direction for the development of Sejong City.
The authors do not wish to attempt to re-visit the rationale for creating a brand-new city in the proposed geographic location. Rather, the authors accept as given the ultimate goal of developing a new city in the proposed location for a purpose supported through a national consensus. The question that the authors desire to address is what that purpose should be.
It seems to the authors that the creation of a new city, other than as a part of ongoing development of regional economies of Korea, should be accompanied by the definition of, and be an embodiment of a determination to fulfill, a new national purpose worthy of the commitment of extraordinary amount of financial and human resources. The authors believe that the increasingly enhanced role of Korea in the international community evidenced by, among other things, Korea’s handling of the recent global financial crisis, its hosting of the next G-20 meeting, its transformation from an economic aid recipient to a provider of such aid and its extension of military presence to multiple locations for peacekeeping or restorative causes renders itself readily to the emergence of a new national purpose for Korea. The authors believe that such new purpose could, and should, be Korea becoming a major contributor to the global peace, the socio-political stability of developing countries and the non-exploitative economic assistance to poor nations. While there are other nations that have significantly greater resources to pursue such admirable goals, Korea is uniquely positioned because of the lack of any baggage of colonialism or ambition of global dominance and because of a successful experience with its own economic development and democratization process.
While Korea is exerting an increasing and benevolent influence in the international community, its own population is undergoing an unprecedented change as a result of the influx of a substantial number of women, laborers and professionals from many nations, especially Southeast Asian countries. Due to a combination of various factors such as a general shortage of laborers or professionals in various sectors of Korean economy and a shortage of marriage-eligible women in rural areas, the number of foreigners residing in Korea has skyrocketed, creating social and cultural issues that have not been encountered by Korea before. There have been reports of ugly racist incidents against darker-skinned foreigners residing in Korea. There is clearly a two-faceted need with regard to this situation – i.e., the creation of an infrastructure to facilitate the transition and adjustment process for foreigners living in Korea, especially non-Korean women married to Korean men and their children and the promotion of understanding and appreciation of multi-ethnic and multi-cultural composition of the Korean population.
In light of the foregoing, the authors would propose that Sejong City be created to fulfill two important and yet inter-related mandates – to be the national carrier of the new global banner of righteousness and benevolence for Korea toward the external global community and to be the inward healing reflection of the new image to promote an understanding and appreciation of peoples of different languages and cultures residing in Korea.
The articulation of the specifics of such new vision for Sejong City will require time and careful analysis but the authors would like to suggest the following for further consideration:
· Sejong City would be established as the national hub for the intellectual and physical infrastructure for provision of policy and economic assistance to developing countries, including think tanks, educational institutions, non-governmental organizations dedicated to the development of developing countries, representative offices of various developing countries, facilities to accommodate visiting students, interns, professionals and government officials, with a goal of developing and implementing a new paradigm for provision of policy and economic assistance;
· Sejong City would be established as the provider of a leading platform for the promotion of understanding and appreciation of cultures and languages of non-ethnic Koreans residing in Korea, including the creation of a “village” for each major cultural or language group represented in Korea modeled after a Chinatown (e.g., a Vietnam village, a Cambodia village, etc.) equipped with authentic architecture, stores with native merchandise, entertainment and leisure facilities unique to such group, possibly in consultation and cooperation with the relevant foreign government so that members of such group could find a place of comfort and strength and education for others with the expectation that the relevant native language would be used in the related “village”; and
· Sejong City could be a bilingual city where both Korean and English would be official languages.
The authors believe that there will be important collateral consequences from the creation of Sejong City as proposed above. The presence of multi-national interests in Sejong City, especially those representing third-world countries, could operate as a meaningful psychological deterrent against any military venture aimed at Korea. Furthermore, the cumulative experience and wisdom to be gained by Korea from assisting developing countries with their economic development will surely be of enormous value to Korea’s formulation and implementation of eventual assistance to be provided to North Korea. On a multi-lateral front, Sejong City could constitute a hub for education and training of, and interaction among, students, interns, governmental officials and other visitors from numerous developing or developed countries. By promoting such interaction, Sejong City could contribute to the development of future leaders for such countries experienced in and comfortable with global interface. Looking further ahead, the authors believe that Sejong City could also be an ideal venue for multi-lateral institutions dedicated to regional or international cooperation. By the same token, in some limited ways, Sejong City could function like Switzerland (an amalgamation of major language groups contributing to ease of tension among surrounding major powers) or Brussels (the capital city of the European Union).
The authors recognize that the creation of a city in Korea with the proposed level of foreign presence could meet with a backlash driven by xenophobic tendencies deeply rooted in Korean national psyche. However, it is the authors’ hope that in light of the self-evident truth that all men are created equal the Korean people would be able to overcome any xenophobic or racist impulses and see that they have been brought to the historic inflection point of being able to proclaim and realize a vision of globalization profoundly different from money-driven globalization preached and practiced to date – a vision that is based on respect for peoples of less developed countries and desire to serve them – in short, a vision of globalization founded upon righteousness, not exploitation or dominance. The proclamation and realization of such a vision would be completely consistent with, and truly honor, the spirit of Sejong the Great after whom this new city is named – the spirit of deliverance of people from ignorance and illiteracy and poverty and backwardness. Sejong City can indeed become a city of righteousness. The authors believe that the Korean people will, and indeed should, rise to this historic opportunity.
