Jin Hee-sun prices Seoul's Yongsan Park rental plan as a lottery for a few tenants

Jin Hee-sun's objection is about who receives the benefit. "A policy that hands a precious national asset to a small number of people as a benefit is not desirable," Jin, an advisor at the law firm Bae, Kim & Lee and a former Seoul vice mayor for administrative affairs, told Seoul Economic Daily ^[6][7]. He also said: "Everyone agrees on taking care of people starting out in society and the vulnerable, such as young adults and newlyweds, but the way it is carried out has to be realistic" ^[25]. On the units themselves he was blunter: "Supplying half-price apartments and half-price jeonse and monthly rentals in good locations that many people prefer is little more than fiction" ^[10]. Jin did not give a unit count for the Yongsan site.

His alternative is a change of trigger. Jin said "floor area ratios near subway stations should be allowed up to 1,000% regardless of whether the zoning is residential or commercial, so that high-density development can take place" ^[11]. Seoul now caps ratios by zoning type: 400% in semi-residential districts, 800% in general commercial and 1,000% in central commercial ^[14]. The city already permits the number Jin wants; he would swap the zoning label for distance from a station as the trigger. Against a citywide average of 150% to 160%, 1,000% is about six to seven times ^[13][21].

The supply figure rests on a Tokyo comparison. Jin put the 23 wards at about 6 million homes against Seoul's 4 million ^[12], a gap of 2 million ^[19], and the 500,000 to 1 million homes he attributes to station-area density would close a quarter to half of that ^[13][20].

He then drew a line at redevelopment. "When rebuilding and other redevelopment projects go ahead, larger sites turn into apartment complexes of several thousand units," Jin said, adding that landscape and traffic have to be weighed and that excessive increases in ratios are not desirable ^[15]. The 1,000% he wants would therefore sit on station-area sites outside rebuilding schemes.

A citywide station rule would be negotiated in every station neighbourhood in Seoul; the Yongsan amendment is one site and one bill ^[1]. I would expect the ruling party to prefer the narrow fight, and the risk in that preference is that a park is easier to defend in public than a table of ratios. Jin said Yongsan Park "has a history of foreign occupation during a period of national suffering, and it is significant as a large green space in the middle of the city center" ^[26].

Jin also proposed lifting third-generation new town ratios from about 200% to between 250% and 300%, which he put at roughly 100,000 additional homes ^[16]. His station-area rule is five to ten times that ^[22].