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Why doesn't South Korea move its capital?
how saving face complicates East Asian negotiation
I heard a story, probably apocryphal, when I was in South Korea: Mr Kim, a mid-level functionary with the urban planning division of the South Korean government, was visited by his counterpart, Mr Lee, from the North Korean government.
The South Korean drove the North Korean through the city center of Seoul and around its environs. Although Mr Kim explained key design points at several important parts of the city, which he found interesting and felt would also interest anyone in his profession, Mr Lee remained sulkily quiet.
Finally, well into the second hour of their drive through Seoul, Mr Lee spoke up: "I know that you arranged to have every car in the country here in Seoul to impress me."
Mr Kim sighed, thought for a moment, then conceded: "You got me there. But the hard part was getting all the buildings up here."
The impossibility of moving all those buildings is what makes Mr Kim’s joke funny. It also explains why it’s not feasible to move the capital as many people have suggested.
Half of South Korea's population lives in Seoul. The metropolitan area's width is roughly a third of the width of the peninsula. Even if it were somehow possible to move so many people & buildings — to say nothing of the infrastructure beneath them — where to put this Neo-Seoul would also be a problem because Korea is mountainous, and most valleys are already filled by farms and other cities.
So it's just not feasible to move Seoul.
But if it were feasible, why bother? North Korean missile technology can deliver nuclear warheads all the way to the California coast. They're certainly capable of reaching anywhere in the southern half of the Korean peninsula. It's only four or five hours by bullet train from Seoul to Busan. A nuke can cover that distance in minutes. So there's nowhere safe to move.
