The Cultural Heritage Administration announced Tuesday ambitious plans to reconstruct much of historic downtown Seoul in a bid to turn the area into a UNESCO Historic City by 2015 (see also Korea Herald, Chosun Ilbo). The project, among other things, will include reconstructing the Gwanghwamun gate (by 2009) and parts of the old city wall, and opening up the mountain in back of Cheong Wa Dae to the general public.
The traffic situation should be a bitch for the next couple of years, but an exciting project none-the-less. And you couldn’t ask for a better mind behind it than Cultural Heritage Administration head Yoo Hong-joon, who’s a lot better off concentrating on old buildings rather than North Korean film soundtracks.
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It’s too bad they’re thinking of opening up Bugaksan, it’s going to get trashed like the other hiking areas around Seoul. It would be good though if they ran the traffic in front of the gate underground, like they are talking about doing with Namdaemun. I always thought having the traffic that close to the gate looked bad and put a lot of pollution on it.
Funny thing is how that’s a nat’l governmnet project and the Seoul city government is expressing worry about what it will do to traffic. A legitimate short-term concern for sure, but given what Seoul did over the past few years with city hall plaza and Cheonggyecheon it is hardly in any position to complain. Almost wonder if mayor and presidential candidate Lee Myung Bak is trying to look good by making the city sound concerned… or if he’s worried about looking bad since traffic will get blamed on the city.
Why not fix up some of the backwater areas in Chollanamdo a little more instead