What I find most amazing about this article is not that construction is being held up because of a dispute over cultural preservation, but the land these buildings sit on was bought for $15 billion:
Booyoung Group’s buildings have been designated as modern architectural assets by the Seoul city government. [SEOUL METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT]There are seven decaying buildings strangely ornamented with rectangular shapes right in the center of Seoul, where land is worth its weight in gold, a stark contrast to the clean modern structures surrounding them.The seven old buildings are located beside the Westin Chosun hotel in Sogong-dong, Jung District, central Seoul. The cafes, massage parlors and other shops in these buildings were all closed down last week. A restaurant on the first floor of one of the buildings had a notice that said, “Due to the reconstruction of this building, we are closing our restaurant on Dec. 22, 2015,” indicating that the reconstruction did not take place for seven months.
The seven buildings sit on about 6,562 square meters (1.6 acres) of land, which the construction company Booyoung Group purchased for about 1.7 trillion won ($15 billion) from its previous owner, Samwhan Corporation, in order to build a hotel. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but the Seoul government is making preservation demands on the construction company which is halting their plans to build a hotel. I think this architect quoted in the article does make a good point:
An architect who requested to remain anonymous said, “We need to reevaluate how much the designated buildings are worth, culturally speaking. Just because a building looks old does not mean it’s worth being preserved.”
Looking at the buildings it is not like they are architectural masterpieces. They are quite honestly ugly rectangles. It will be interesting to see what happens with this development in the coming years.
A mom with a 7-month-old baby was slapped in the face after she asked a man in 50s to “put out a cigarette” in a no smoking area.
Seoul Seobu Police said Saturday that a man in his 50s was accused of slapping a mom in the face while she was pushing a stroller carrying her baby.
According to the police, the man was smoking at around 5 p.m. on July 30, near the entrance of Eungam Station in Seoul, when the woman asked him to put out his cigarette or go elsewhere.
They were caught on CCTV, with the man following the woman and slapping her on the face while she tried to cross the street at a crosswalk with a stroller, the police said. [Korea Herald]
Seoul’s summer hotspot, Yeouido Hangang Park was the venue for the 2016 Water Fight Festival held in the city as part of the annual, summer long, Han River Festival. The event was held across two weekends and is a fun way to cool down in Seoul’s famously hot and humid summer if you don’t mind getting wet! Teams were divided by blood type and set against each other using water guns and water balloons in addition to a program of live music. [Flickr]
This is a pretty big bust of street racers in the Seoul area:
Seoul police announced Thursday that they have rounded up 73 people involved in racing their luxury cars on public roads during the wee hours of the night.
From May 2015 to May of this year, police found 73 people who participated in 22-kilometer (13.6-mile) races from the Jangam Station in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi, to the Songchu three-way intersection and back.
The racers were grouped into twos and threes by the horsepower of their cars, and as many as 10 to 15 such groups participated in the midnight race from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m., according to police.
The participants drove at about 60 kilometers-per-hour until they hit the Sapaesan Tunnel, a 4-kilometer-long four-lane tunnel, where they reached speeds of 200 to 324 kilometers per hour. The speed limit in the tunnel is 100 kilometers per hour.
Some motor service center owners helped racers tweak the electronic control unit of their cars in order to allow extreme speeding. Police said some of them received roughly 3 million won ($2,649) per car.
Among the 73 drivers booked by police, only one was a woman.
All 73 face the charge of violating the Road Traffic Act and five have been arrested for being chief organizers of the races. Six men were found to have raced at least 100 times since May of last year. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
The Dongchun Circus performs in downtown Seoul on June 26, 2016, as part of the culture show “I.Carnival. You.” The circus troupe, with a 91-year history, is the only remaining one in the country. (Yonhap)
A conservative Christian nongovernmental organization protested the 17th Korean Queer Culture Festival to be held today and condemned Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for supporting sexual and gender minority rights in front of Seoul City Hall on Friday.
“Homosexuality out! Park Won-soon out! Ban Ki-moon out!” a pastor from the Jesus Foundation shouted on a stage at Seoul Plaza. “Antidiscrimination law out! Islam out!”
A flier in front of a tent erected by the foundation read, “Homosexuality is a sin that challenges the order God has created!”
The Jesus Foundation has been conducting protests of the annual gay pride parade in front of Seoul City Hall for over 400 days and collecting signatures on a petition to propose an anti-gay marriage bill. The foundation stepped up its demonstration a day before the opening of the biggest festival in the nation to advocate the rights of the so-called LGBTAIQ, or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, asexual, intersex and queer, community.
The size of the festival has grown from only 50 people in 2000 to 30,000 in 2015. Some 65,000 are expected to participate in today’s parade, and a police force of about 2,000 will be dispatched to oversee the event.
The event will be held from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Seoul Plaza. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
As usual these protesters always produce some funny quotes:
The foundation denounced Park and Ban for their active support of gay people. “Homosexuals in Korea enjoy the most privileges in the entire world; they are like VIPs,” Rhim said, despite the fact that gay marriage is still not recognized in Korea.
You can read more at the link, but I wonder what VIP privileges Mr. Rhim is referring to?
It should be interesting to see what comes out of this study from NASA where they are trying to determine how much of the pollution over Seoul is produced domestically compared to what blows in from China:
The cockpit warning blared insistently as the plane spiraled downward to 500 feet above Seoul: “Too low, too low, terrain. Pull up, pull up, pull up.”
The pilots ignored the automated voice despite a nervous glance from a visiting reporter. Their mission was to take the DC-8 as low or as high as the NASA scientists working in the back required.
The flight was part of a six-week joint Korea-U.S. air-quality field study — known as KORUS-AQ — which officially kicked off on April 29. The timing coincided with the so-called yellow dust season that sees fine particulate matter swept into the air from neighboring China’s Gobi Desert. [Stars & Stripes]
This is just an example of why Korean youth have such a hard time finding employment when retirees over 60 with no job training are given jobs they have no skills for:
Seoul Metro, which has been outsourcing maintenance work to reduce costs, pressured subcontractors to hire its own retirees at triple the salary of regular mechanics.
And many were hired to do mechanical work for which they had no training.
The influx of untrained Seoul Metro retirees over the age of 60 resulted in the real mechanics being forced to work alone, as was a teenaged maintenance worker who was killed by an arriving train at Guui Station on May 28.
Internal records of Eunsung PSD, the subcontractor who employed the 19-year-old accident victim, showed that Seoul Metro has been pressuring such subcontractors to hire its retirees. (……..)
“The situation today is no different to and perhaps worse than the social hierarchy of the Joseon Dynasty,” said the Saenuri Party’s floor leader Chung Jin-suk. “How is it possible that a 19-year-old young man receives 1.44 million won while a Seoul Metro retiree rakes in some 4 million won per month?”
The history of so-called revolving door appointments – the finding of cushy jobs for people retiring from government corporations – between Seoul Metro and the subcontractor does not end there. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
![Booyoung Group’s buildings have been designated as modern architectural assets by the Seoul city government. [SEOUL METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT]](https://i0.wp.com/pds.joins.com/jmnet/koreajoongangdaily/_data/photo/2016/08/17202325.jpg?resize=350%2C247)
