SEOUL, September 03 (AJP) - Central government ministries and about 350 public institutions will start leaving the Seoul metropolitan area in 2027, advancing a project the Constitutional Court forced South Korea to scale back more than two decades ago.
Prime Minister Han Seong-sook said Thursday the government would publish its list of institutions to be moved in the fourth quarter of this year and begin relocating them the following year. The list will be built under what she called a principle of minimum retention, meaning an institution stays in the capital region only if there is a compelling reason to keep it there.
The 350 figure covers public institutions, a South Korean category running from state-owned energy and housing corporations to research institutes and small licensing bodies. About 525 exist nationwide with an authorized headcount of roughly 432,000.
Han said they would be placed in clusters rather than parceled out across provinces. "We will avoid a share-the-spoils distribution and instead gather the energy of regional growth like a bonfire, concentrating institutions around the innovation cities to maximize the strength of regional hubs," she said at Government Complex Seoul.
Innovation cities are planned districts built outside the capital region from 2005 to house institutions moved out of Seoul in the first relocation round.
The ministries are the harder half of the announcement, because moving them requires changing the law. Interior and Safety Minister Yun Ho-jung said the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family would go to the central city of Sejong from the first half of 2027, ahead of other ministries, because their size and the ripple effects of their departure are large.
Both are currently barred from moving. Article 16 of the Special Act on the Construction of the Multifunctional Administrative City in the Yeongi-Gongju Area, the 2005 law that created Sejong, names five ministries as excluded from relocation. They are Foreign Affairs, Unification, Justice, National Defense, and Gender Equality and Family. All five were held in the capital region on the argument that their work is bound tightly to the president, the National Assembly, and the judiciary.
Yun said the government would push an amendment striking those ministries from the exclusion list. "We will also pursue a revision of the act that deletes the relevant institutions from the list of bodies excluded from relocation," he said.
The route has been used before. The Interior and Safety Ministry was itself written into the exclusion list in a 2014 revision, removed by a further amendment in 2017, and relocated to Sejong afterward.
Yun said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Unification would be considered for relocation in step with the presidential office move in 2030 and the opening of the National Assembly's Sejong chamber in 2033.
That leaves the Ministry of National Defense as the only one of the five with no timetable attached to it.
Agencies needing purpose-built accommodation will move later. Yun said the indictment agency and the serious crime investigation agency, along with the Korean National Police Agency, would relocate only after new buildings are finished. The first two launch on Oct. 2, when Korea abolishes its 78-year-old prosecution service and splits investigation from indictment.
Institutions left unnamed on Thursday, including the Financial Services Commission, have not been ruled out. Yun said the final list would be confirmed and formally notified during the fourth quarter.
The plan closes a fight running since the late President Roh Moo-hyun campaigned in 2002 on moving Cheong Wa Dae, the presidential office, and the ministries to the Chungcheong region in the center of the country.
His New Administrative Capital Act was promulgated on Jan. 16, 2004. Ten months later, on Oct. 21, the Constitutional Court voided it, holding that Seoul's status as the capital forms part of an unwritten customary constitution built on some 600 years of practice, and that moving it would require a constitutional amendment or a national referendum.
The Roh government returned in 2005 with a version that left the president in Seoul and sent the ministries alone. That became Sejong, and that is the version the court allowed to stand.
President Lee Myung-bak tried to undo it. His government abandoned the ministry relocation in January 2010 and proposed converting Sejong into a self-sufficient education and business city. The National Assembly rejected the revision on June 29, 2010. Of 275 members present, 105 voted for it and 164 against, with six abstentions. Prime Minister Chung Un-chan, who had led the effort, resigned weeks later.
Sejong launched as a special autonomous city on July 1, 2012, with a population of about 100,700.
The presidential office planned there is due for completion in August 2029, nine months earlier than the original target, with groundbreaking set for 2027. The National Assembly's Sejong chamber is scheduled for 2033.
Land, Infrastructure and Transport Minister Kim Yun-duk said the second round would not repeat the pace of the first, which took more than seven years from announcement to actual relocation. Institutions will move into leased private buildings starting next year rather than wait for new complexes to be finished.
Kim said the criteria used to justify staying in Seoul during the first round would be reviewed in full, and that support would be weighted toward institutions that move farther and move sooner.
He also said the first round failed to pull anchor companies and research institutes along with the relocated institutions, and that the second would group them by the strategic industry of the innovation city receiving them.
Han said the government would cover relocation and housing costs for staff and improve schools and hospitals in the receiving areas. She acknowledged the plan would meet resistance. "It will not be without some disagreement and walls of competing interests," she said, promising to listen to local governments and labor groups.
The government argues the concentration itself is the problem. Han said the capital region is saturated with people, capital, companies and infrastructure while other regions face depopulation.
"Balanced growth is not a matter of choice. It has become a survival strategy for a sustainable Republic of Korea," she said. Seoul and the surrounding region will be redirected toward economic, cultural and international exchange functions, Han added.
Kim set out the standard the fourth-quarter list will be measured against. "Unless an institution absolutely must remain, we will include it in the relocation in principle," he said.
AJP Takeaways
● South Korea will start moving central government ministries and about 350 public institutions out of the Seoul metropolitan area in 2027, with the relocation list published in the fourth quarter of this year.
● The Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family go first, from the first half of 2027, but the National Assembly must first amend the 2005 law that bars them from moving.
● That law exempted five ministries from relocation. Foreign Affairs and Unification are now tied to the 2030 presidential office move and the 2033 National Assembly Sejong chamber, leaving National Defense as the only one without a timetable.
● The plan revives a project the Constitutional Court struck down in October 2004, ruling that Seoul's status as capital is part of an unwritten customary constitution.
● Institutions will move into leased private buildings rather than wait for new complexes, after the first relocation round took more than seven years to get underway.
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