So does anyone really think Yongsan Garrison will be completely turned into a park?:
A slide presented to Yongsan Garrison residents during a town-hall meeting at the South Post chapel Friday, Nov. 16, 2018, shows expected changes over the next two years.
Garrison commander Col. Monica Washington said the process of returning the land to the South Korean government isn’t likely to begin until July 2020 at the earliest.
“At that point then we think that we will be ready, of course if everything goes according to plan, to begin to look at some of the return, actually going through some of the returns process, which is actually going to take some time,” she told Stars and Stripes.
The next major milestone will be late next year when the Brian Allgood Community Hospital is due to close as its namesake hospital on Humphreys opens. That will trigger the closure of the commissary, the post exchange, the gas station and other facilities.
“There will be a … very minute footprint here on Yongsan, although we will still have families that we will have to support here,” Washington said in a recent interview in her office near a pedestrian overpass that crosses a busy thoroughfare that bisects the base.
She estimated it will take six or seven months to do the closure process, including moving equipment and turning off utilities, once most of the garrison is vacated in December 2019.
The military plans to maintain a small section for residual forces from the Combined Forces Command, USFK, the garrison and supporting agencies on the side of the base known as South Post. Dragon Hill Lodge, a resort-style military hotel, is planning to continue operations despite reports to the contrary. The U.S. Embassy also has residential housing in the area, although it will eventually build a new compound on a corner of the sub-base known as Camp Coiner. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link, but the ROK government is sticking with the idea of making a city park. I suspect a park will be built one day over the old Yongsan Garrison, but it will be a smaller park the initially envisioned. The rest of the land I would not be surprised is developed for other purposes around the smaller park.
Yongsan Central Park apartments.