Sejong, the country's administrative capital, 100km from Seoul, was founded just a decade ago
from Jinju’s high-speed train station towards the outskirts of town winds past row after row of brand-new high-rise apartment blocks decorated in dark grey and ochre. The buildings are surrounded by half-finished strip malls with mock-European brick facades. Construction is frantic, though large posters advertise steep discounts on flats in the finished complexes.
Seoul, the neighbouring city of Incheon and the surrounding province of Gyeonggi are home to half of South Korea’s 52m people and produce half of its wealth. Vibrant and full of opportunity, the capital region is also congested, expensive and stressful to live in. The innovation cities, conceived in the mid-2000s and modelled on earlier plans for “balanced development”, are one of a long series of policies aiming to help less buoyant places advance.
But for all the rapidity of its development, Sejong is a far cry from Seoul. Yoo Kyung-weon, a young official from the capital, moved to Sejong for her job but says a lot of her colleagues did not. “It’s cheaper than Seoul and I can cycle to work in a few minutes, which is nice,” she says. “But there’s nothing to do here, and every time I go out I worry about bumping into someone I work with.” She frequently spends her weekends back in Seoul.
Back in Jinju, a young mother who used to live in the older part of town says she enjoys life closer to schools and green spaces. Rather then enticing Seoulites, innovation cities seem to attract people from the surrounding areas. Villages and towns in poorer regions around innovation cities have higher-than-usual vacancy rates, which suggests the cities may simply be sapping economic vitality in their hinterland. As South Korea’s population declines, such trends will accelerate.
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