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Korea Cableway's lawsuit against Seoul's gondola strengthens its own bid for Namsan relicensing
Korea Cableway Industry must win Seoul's relicensing by September 2028 for a Namsan cable car it has run alone for 64 years. Its own lawsuit has kept the replacement gondola enjoined since October 2024, so a refusal would leave the city with nothing ready to run in its place.
The Investor · Invest desk
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What happened
- The revised Track Transport Act, in force since Sept. 18, caps track transport licences at 20 years and gives operators past that mark two years to be relicensed.
- To be relicensed, an operator files a business plan and safety records, and Seoul weighs safety, environmental conservation and the public interest.
- Seoul lost the gondola case at the trial court last December and again on appeal on Sept. 17.
- Kang Hoon-sik, chief of the Presidential Secretariat, had called for reforms that included putting an expiration date on licences.
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Why it matters
- constraint A refusal with no gondola ready would halt a line carrying about 1.7 million riders a year, a disruption Seoul's public-interest review has to count against saying no.
- decision Seoul has to pick a term length, and a short grant is the one way to relicense the incumbent while keeping the gondola as its successor.
- precedent Other operators past the 20-year mark face the same review, and Namsan shows that litigation against a replacement can make renewal the regulator's lowest-risk option.
By the day the revised law took effect, the gondola had been stalled for about 23 months [22], close to the whole two-year window Seoul now has to rule on its incumbent [5]. The Seoul Economic Daily reports that the delay could leave the city little room to turn the operator down [3]. On the paper's account, the incumbent looks increasingly likely to keep its business rights even at the first review [1].
The service is modest in scale. Two 48-passenger cabins [12] move 96 people per crossing [19], and annual traffic works out to roughly 4,700 riders a day, or about 49 full loads of both cabins [20]. The paper reports operating profit in the billions of won each year in recent years [7] but does not give a precise figure, so the value of another term to the holder cannot be priced from the record.
At a Cabinet meeting last December, President Lee Jae-myung said, "Why does one particular individual get to enjoy all those privileges there for decades?" [8] The law answered with an end date [5] and left the decision with the city [10].
Seoul can relicense for the full term. A grant of up to 20 more years [11], made by the September 2028 deadline [4], would run to about 2048, 86 years after the monopoly began [21]. It can instead grant a short term and keep the operator in place until gondola towers can go up. Or it can refuse and leave Namsan without a cable car until a gondola exists. I'd expect the short term, because it is the only outcome that keeps both the president's pledge [1] and the service. The counter-case is the full term. With the gondola still enjoined [13], Seoul would have little written basis for a shorter grant if the operator's business plan and safety records pass a review built on those documents [10].
The route around the courts runs through the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. Seoul wants the 12-meter height limit on structures in urban natural park zones eased so gondola towers can be built without a separate urban planning change [15]. The ministry gave notice of that revision last year [16]. The presidential office has attacked the monopoly in public [8] [9]; the ministry, meanwhile, took no follow-up steps on the rule for more than a year after the notice period ended [16]. It says opinions were sharply divided and that restarting would mean the whole process again, including a fresh public notice [17].
What to watch
- Whether the land ministry actually opens a new public notice on the 12-meter height rule before Seoul's review of Korea Cableway Industry begins.
- Whether Seoul takes the gondola case beyond the Sept. 17 appeal ruling, or relies only on the decree route.
- The term Seoul sets on any relicensing before September 2028; a grant near the 20-year maximum would mean the cap left the monopoly intact until the late 2040s.