Kim, 27, was unemployed and living with his parents in the city of Mungyeong in central North Gyeongsang province, when he moved to Seoul three years ago in the hope of landing a job in the military or government. He lives in the northern Seoul suburb of Ilsan and spends his days working various part-time jobs and studying at a social service exam prep academy to get ready for the demanding test that could determine his career fate.  

Living in the capital area has exposed him to its hazards. “Driving a car and taking public transit are both uncomfortable in the city due to traffic jams that take hours.

“It’s also impossible for people my age to live in the [central] city, as housing prices are absurd,” said Kim, who pays about US$360 in rent but estimates that it would cost three times more in the capital.

Seoul has the third-highest flat prices in the world, according to Numbeo, a website that compares the cost of living in global cities.

FROM SEOUL TO SEJONG

There has been a recent revival of an idea long in the making: moving the administrative capital from Seoul to Sejong, a special self-governing city about 121km south of Seoul. The roots of the original plan date back to 2002, when the late democrat Roh Moo-hyun was elected president with the commitment to decentralise Seoul’s political and economic dominance while promoting regional balance. But the plan was later declared invalid by the Constitutional Court after the conservative Grand National Party – now the Liberty Korea Party – raised its objections.

In the wake of the decision, the government changed the plan from making Sejong the new administrative capital into remaking it a “multifunctional” administrative city. Construction of the city began in 2007 and by 2012, 44 central administrative agencies and 16 national research and development institutes had moved to the planned city. The National Assembly and Cheongwadae – the executive office and residency of the president, respectively – along with other central offices remain in Seoul.

Today, there are over 350,000 residents in Sejong, about 150,000 short of the goal for 2030.

“It wasn’t only the ruling from the Constitutional Court that put a pause on the plans, but the general public didn’t give their consent to the moving of the administrative capital,” Woo Won-shik a National Assembly member from the Democratic Party of Korea told This Week in Asia.

However, for some members of the party, there is hope of turning around the court’s decision and the opinions of the public. A survey last year by Realmeter saw 53.9 per cent agreeing with the move of the administrative capital while 34.3 per cent were opposed to the idea.

“As a proud native of Seoul, I love my home city,” said Woo, the head of the Presidential Committee on Balanced National Development, which was created last year. “Yet, I prioritise my duty to help solve the national problems of unprecedented overpopulation in our capital and the risk of seeing our rural cities disappearing in the near future.”

The Korea Employment Information Service classified 105 cities, districts and counties as extinction risk regions out of 228 in total. A region is considered to be at extinction risk when its population of young women (20 to 39 years old) does not amount to half of the senior population (65 years old and above). These regions face the possibility of disappearing from the face of the map in 30 years if nothing changes.

These grim statistics are why Woo has worked through his committee to implement Roh’s original plan to make Sejong the new administrative capital.

“Planning for a more balanced nation is not a problem of choice but a matter of survival,” he said.

But Woo and his committee are taking a gradualist approach to achieving their objective instead of remaining in a gridlock with opposing politicians and planning experts on the issue.

“We have compromised with the opposition conservative party to move the National Assembly to Sejong in the near future, but moving Cheongwadae will need more time,” he said. The plan has yet to be finalised, however, and a formal discussion on it is set for next month.

DECENTRALISATION

In the meantime, some people, like the 27-year-old Noh, have jumped on the bandwagon of “decentralising” Seoul in their own ways. Noh thought about getting a job in video production in the big city back in 2018, but he surprised his friends when he instead decided to move to Naju – a city about 285km south of Seoul with just over 100,000 people.

He started a content production company called NiNaNo Planning when two of his friends from Seoul who were also feeling burnt out joined him in the southwestern corner of the country.

But Noh has yet to fully escape the pull, and riches, of Seoul. Most of the revenue for his company comes from freelance work involving stage design, art directing and industrial design for Seoul-based organisations.

“Most of our gigs are in Seoul, as the universities and companies that hire us are all crowded in that one city,” he admitted. “But we try to spend most of our money back in Naju and its region, as we are waiting for a boom to happen here and other rural parts of the country.

“We first started by building a cafe in the middle of nowhere so we could start luring in the youth with concerts and events that were unheard of in this region,” Noh continued. “As our cafe, Youth Alley, gradually received more guests and attention, we began to record our activities to promote online.”

Youth Alley now anchors a street that has become a sort of landmark in Naju, but the growth came slowly, Noh said. “When we used to try to have live concerts, there was no one to watch the performances, and when we tried to build more enterprises for youth, there was no one who wanted to work with us.”

But now, as the government has invested in making so-called innovation cities in rural regions while supporting start-ups in these cities, Naju has evolved from “a place where not even an ant lived”, according to Noh, to a city that boasts a youthful centre full of restaurants and cafes. Youth Alley and its burgeoning neighbourhood are seen as a crucial part of the evolution.

“Our goal is tell the youth that all you need to do is enjoy life,” Noh said. “And this doesn’t require you to live in Seoul or work in a major corporation. You just don’t need to worry.”