Sunday January 11, 2009
Finding Seoul’s soul
By ANDREW SIA
Politicians and breakdancers both aim to kick South Korea’s capital out of the dreary Industrial Age into a glorious new era of vibrant arts, culture – and lots of greenery.
CAN the concrete blocks of Seoul be “softened” into a kind of Asian Paris-cum-space-age city? Can hard-working crew-cut Korean men selling dull machines grow longer hair, and then sell snazzy designer products?
This is the ambitious project to remake Seoul into the “Soul of Asia, a city of design and culture”, reflecting the total change in mindset from the dour, industrial age and the military dictatorships of the 1960s to 1980s. Now, it’s about being a 21st century of democracy, about openness and creativity and the Korean Wave of pop culture sweeping Asia.
Make no mistake, though, Seoul is not about to put up saccharine Dewan Bandaraya-style tourism stage shows. Rather, the city seeks to change its urban fabric with cutting-edge designer buildings and lots of parks, and become a city where “the arts flow like water and wind”.
In this artist’s impression, Seoul’s new downtown, appropriately called Dreamhub, looks like it leapt out of a Star Wars movie fantasy. – Seoul Metropolitan Government If you think that sounds namby-pamby and artsy-fartsy, think again. Instead, there is serious dollars and cents talk of enhancing “cultural capital” – whole industries (and jobs) in fashion, designing, architecture, multi-media, etc – in striving to be become a “global city brand” on par with Paris and London.
In other words, design is serious business, as South Korea’s companies have learnt – for instance, in enabling Samsung to overtake America’s Motorola to become the world’s second-largest cell phone maker (after Finland’s Nokia) in 2007.
A few decades ago, a city’s value rested on its “hard assets” such as roads, factories and the like, says the promotional book published by the Seoul Metropolitan Government. “But the 21st century has gone beyond selling functions to selling sensitivity.”
Culture-nomics
The dynamic Seoul Mayor, Oh Se-hoon, 47, is the driving force behind this paradigm shift.
“We must create a city environment where people want to come and live with their businesses and their families. Attractiveness is the key to national competitiveness,” he told Global Asia magazine last year.
South Korea is a leader in IT creativity. This computer image, projected on the floor at the Korean Food Expo, has ‘live’ fish that respond to a person’s footsteps.– Photos by ANDREW SIA / The Star “Korea ... has achieved democratisation and economic growth in the shortest time very successfully. However, we have focused too much on practical issues (and) culture was somewhat ignored ... we’ve not been very earnest in selling and marketing our abundant cultural heritage.”
In an interview with Newsweek, also last year, he explained, “Design is very important in today’s business.
“Major companies have chief design officers sitting next to their CEOs. We already have 30,000 design students graduating every year. We have to make the best use of these human resources.
“Our goal is to have people say that if you want to see the latest design trend, you should go to Seoul. That will be a valuable asset for economic growth.”
Oh has labelled these ideas as “culture-nomics”: “Culture is the key factor that can promote the attractiveness of a country or city. Products we export with a touch of culture will be sold at a more expensive price,” he added.
Massive makeover
The slogans touted for this extensive “hard city to soft city” makeover include: “a new lifestyle capital of the East”, “the centre of the future”, “the global creative city”, and “Seoul, the soul of Asia”.
The use of art, culture, and ecofriendly lifestyles to “add value” to real estate is nothing new. Singapore has done it with its Esplanade Theatres and sumptuous island-wide landscaping while even in Kuala Lumpur, savvy developer YTL has glitzed up its greenery-laden Sentul West residential project with the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre.
But the massive scope of Seoul’s urban redevelopment ambitions – 3.3 million sq m in an already packed city over the next 12 years – is typical of South Korean “can do” determination, whether in rebuilding the country after the devastating 1950s Korean War, in exporting cars and LCD TVs globally, or in reaching the semi-finals of the 2002 World Cup.
Seoul, a city of some 10 million, is already the world’s most (Internet) wired city, and South Korea’s creativity in IT products and services is globally renowned. Now, it’s about remaking the physical landscape and Seoul’s planners are casting eyes at Paris, London, Barcelona, and Sydney, cities whose iconic buildings and effervescent urban culture have pulled in not only transient tourists, but also long-staying professionals, businessmen, and investors.
And with the recent problems in its economy, pessimists fret about the future, as South Korea is sandwiched between two huge neighbours – fast-growing China and long-time rival Japan. Apart from that, it is said that future rivalry to attract human and financial resources will not so much be between nations but between cities. As it is, a Business Week article points out that Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Yokohama are also aiming to become regional, if not global, design centres.
A whole plethora of projects are supposed to help in rebranding the city, and late last year, a group of South-East Asian journalists were taken on a whirlwind tour of Seoul Fashion Week, the Seoul Design Olympiad, intriguing digital art at the Seoul Museum of Art and even to watch food arrangement art at the Korean Food Expo.
Seoul’s re-birth will depend on the design sensibilitesof its young. Here, a restaurant in Insadong shows off quirky decor. Green rebirth
Then comes the architecture. One landmark project is the US$324mil (RM1.134bil) revamping of the 80-year-old Dongdaemun Stadium, which will be redesigned by Zaha Hadid, the renowned Iraq-born, Britain-based architect, with breathtaking landscaped parks and curved walkways.
But the biggie in Seoul’s new look is the Hangang Renaissance, a phenomenal plan encompassing 33 projects to shift the city’s centre towards the Hangang River.
Back in the “practical” dour old days when South Korea rushed feverishly into grey industrialisation, the river’s bank was covered over with stark concrete walls to control floods – without considering its recreational potential.
The new thinking is that the Hangang should be an inspiring lifestyle focus, indeed soul, of the city.
There are plans to “soften” the river with more gradual, plant-filled “ecological river walls”, and transform much more of the riverside into areas where people can not only walk, roller-blade, wind surf, and sip coffee but even enjoy concerts.
To facilitate pedestrian access, why, the city even plans to move some riverside highways underground! Now that’s commitment.
Besides blueprints for biotech and nanotech centres at several new “waterfront towns”, the pinnacle of the Hangang will be the Dreamhub. With twin 100-storey landmark office towers designed by Marshall Strabala plus pedestrian malls and open space to rival New York’s Central Park, it looks like it leapt out of a Star Wars movie fantasy.
Instead of being cramped and claustrophobic like downtown Seoul now, Dreamhub is designed so its buildings maintain “sight lines” (views) as well as allow breezes to blow along several “green axes”. And people will be able to hop about using water taxis. Or, with the new international wharf, they can even board ocean-going ships and cruise down to Shanghai!
The modest equivalents in Kuala Lumpur would be to change the Klang River from being a giant monsoon drain into a recreational area filled with greenery, riverside cafes, water sports, art centres, and high-tech commercial/residential developments. And imagine taking a water taxi (along a clean river!) from the city centre down to Shah Alam and Klang to beat the highway jams....
Fresh attitudes
All of Seoul’s visions may sound like lots of top-down planned real estate redevelopment a la our own Multimedia Super Corridor. But underlying all of it is a blossoming of South Korean creativity where it matters: at people level.
When I ask Eun Sook Kwon, the director of the Seoul Design Olympiad, if South Korea could really achieve its creative ambitions, she replies, “We have already seen it happening with the Korean Wave sweeping Asia. Our TV dramas, movies, and pop music culture have made an impact.”
Indeed, the slick TV commercials promoting Seoul feature its throbbing nightlife complete with street break dancers. Oh yes, what a change in mindsets. Break dancers are no longer the samseng or hoodlums of the dour Industrial Age but the new poster boys of Seoul’s creativity and passion to usher in economic progress!
The cradles of the city’s designer impulses may not lie in sedate corporate boardrooms or government offices. Rather, they probably find more fertile ground in areas like Hongdae, around Hongik University, with its vibrant night club, dance, and indie music scenes. Or in Dongdaemun, home to over 30,000 stores (some the size of closets) where hundreds of obscure designers labour on, hoping to hit the big time.
More upmarket exhibitions of South Korea’s taste for beautiful things can be seen at the shopping district of Myeong-dong, the fashionistas’ wanna-be-seen haunt of Apgujeong with its luxury outlets and the European-style cafes and off-beat boutiques of Sinsadong.
Political will
South Korea’s youth may be bustling with creative impulses but, ultimately, changes require political will from the old men in charge.
A case in point is the restoration of the historic Cheonggye stream running through central Seoul. In 1968, the Korean military dictator Park Chung-hee covered it over with a highway, condemning the stream into becoming little more than a drain.
But in 2003, then Seoul Mayor, Lee Myung-bak, initiated a project to remove the elevated highway and restore the stream. Two years and US$280mil (RM999mil) later, Cheonggye became a city centrepiece visited by tourists and locals, and an example of what Koreans can do once they set their minds to it.
The restoration helped Lee become a nationally renowned figure, and not only did Time magazine nominate Lee as one its 2007 “Heroes of the Environment”, but the South Korean people elected him as their nation’s President last year!
Since the country’s democratisation began in 1992, green policies have become good politics. South Koreans are enthusiastic nature lovers with the nation’s top three national parks receiving over nine million visitors annually.
Oh, and the current Seoul mayor, Oh, began his lawyer’s career by taking up one of South Korea’s earliest environmental cases: to prevent smaller city buildings from having the sun blocked out by neighbouring skyscrapers, ie, defending the “public right to enjoy sunshine”. And though he denies it in interviews, there is speculation that the grand ecofriendly makeover of Seoul may even catapult Oh into the presidency one day.
He has also pledged what he calls a “culture bomb” – to initiate programmes for low-income families to enjoy culture at affordable prices – as a far-sighted development of human capital.
“It is my goal to make culture closer to our citizens (so that it’s) like water and air in their everyday lives ... to make such investments for the next five to 10 years, and create the brand value as an international city of culture,” he told Global Asia in the same interview last year.
Oh’s efforts were immensely boosted when Seoul beat some 20 other contenders, including Singapore and Dubai, to be designated the 2010 World Design Capital in October, a title bestowed biennially by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design, which represents some 150,000 designers worldwide.
But it has not been easy. Oh has had to give lectures to explain his ideas and persuade the public. Moreover, Korean organisations are known to be very hierarchical, and Oh has had to change attitudes in his own Government. There, too, he’s changing things creatively.
“Hierarchy equals bureaucracy. I’ve adopted the concept of a creative city administration. If you just do what you are told to do, you will never get promoted or recognised. It is always about trying new things and making them come true.”
Clearly, there is visionary strategic thinking at the top that has launched Seoul on a remarkably ambitious “cultural engineering” mission: to transform the mind-set of the industrial-era grindstone into one of zesty creativity and vibrant lifestyles amidst lush greenery. Seoul may indeed show other cities the way to find their souls.
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