Fierce debate over South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun's decision to relocate the nation's administrative capital from Seoul to the town of Gongju is dominating the headlines.
While the administration cites the urgent need for decentralisation, some see it as an attempt by the reform-minded president, who recently emerged from an impeachment crisis, to press through a bold, flagship policy.
In this, there is an odd historical echo. In 1392 another leader, King Yi Taejo, relocated the country's capital from Kaesong (in North Korea today) to Seoul to break with the past and establish the legitimacy of his dynasty.
For half a millennium, the city remained a royal capital - and some curious traces of that royal past still exist.
Visitors to Seoul in May each year bear witness to the remains of the royal days in a bizarre spectacle: a 'royal parade', complete with palace guardsmen in fur and mail, cavalry in Mongolian armour, and court officials in coloured silk, wind in stately progress past the boutiques, fast-food restaurants, banks and multinational corporations that dominate today's ultra-modern metropolis.
Part of the city's 'Hi Seoul' festival, it is an ersatz recreation of lost glory. Visitors to the starting point, Gyeongbok Palace, see high school students struggling into the guardsmen's uniforms while having goatees and moustaches applied by makeup artists. The cavalry are members of the Seoul Racing Association. The royal palanquins are not carried, but wheeled. But in the centre of this staged mass is the real thing.