President Lee Plans to Streamline Processes to Redevelop Vacated USFK Bases
This is something I can support President Lee on, redeveloping the land former USFK bases were once on instead of just leaving it abandoned:
An artist’s rendition of the Gyeonggi Unification Plus Center, which is slated to open sometime this year in Uijeongbu city, South Korea. (Gyeonggi-do Provincial Government)
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung called on the military this week to streamline the process of repurposing government real estate previously occupied by U.S. forces since the Korean War. The directive is aimed at reusing now-abandoned property in northern Gyeonggi-do, South Korea’s most populous province, that the United States returned to the South Korean government after consolidating its forces elsewhere, presidential office spokeswoman Kang Yu-jung said Tuesday at a news conference in Seoul.
During his presidential campaign, Lee claimed that the returned lands in Gyeonggi-do were unused and neglected due to bureaucratic restrictions. Lee, elected president this year, served as governor of Gyeonggi-do until 2021. He said during the campaign that businesses had no interest in developing the land after local governments marked up real estate prices. “It can be deregulated, but it is not being deregulated,” he said during a speech in Paju on May 20. “As a governor of Gyeonggi-do, I had limited authority. But when I have presidential authority, I will change the regulations to reasonably solve problems and avoid unfair situations.”
You can read more at the link, but there has been plenty of successful examples of vacated bases being redeveloped such as the former Camp Castle in Dongducheon and Camp Sears in Uijeongbu.
