The largest urban planning project of South Korea is never going to be realized. Of course, I talk about the Yongsan International Business District, better known as Dream Hub. KORAIL announced that they won’t develop the land. The bought properties are going back to their former owners and the partners of Dream Hub project get their investment back. The project never made it out of the planning phase. However, the plans are pretty amazing and so I’ll try to show briefly a real estate developer’s dream.

Property development value of 31 trillion Korean Won (27-29 billion US Dollar) falls flat. A month ago KORAIL intended to downsize the project but that measure couldn’t save the development project. The total area for the project was 515.485 square meter large. 18 star architects have been involved in this project and there was a master plan for this whole area in the heart of Seoul. The design head was the world-famous Daniel Libeskind. The most impressive building would have been “Triple One”, a landmark of 620 m height.

Nine residential sky scrapers, six business complexes and six shopping malls were intented to fill the land. This ambitious plan was amazing and really gigantic. On the other hand, the downfall doesn’t result only from internal struggles or mismanagement. The whole idea of Dream Hub was too large and in a period of a weak global economy and falling real estate prices, the risk was too high.

The transport plan included bimodal trams, street cars and some sketches even a monorail. You can see the transport infrastructure in the following plan scheme:

Dream Hub isn’t only about money. People died in struggle for their homes. A documentary called “Two Doors” (두 개의 문) showed evictions of local residents. An accidental fire, while police carried out a forced eviction, led to the death of six people. KORAIL can expect a number of lawsuits from locals and from various Dream Hub investors.

After seven years of struggle between KORAIL and (changing) partners (among them was Samsung and at the end Lotte Tours), the Dream Hub project died. The big question now is how can KORAIL pay back all the money back? The rail company has already high debts and since eight years, they don’t make any profit. The news doesn’t speak of it, but I think that it will have effects on the rail infrastructure development. I suppose that KORAIL lost so much money that they won’t be able to finance any large-scale rail constructions. Another important question is: What’s going to happen with the land and who will take it over?

Sources and Related Links: Korea Joongang Daily | Korea Herald (1) | Korea Herald (2) | The Korea Times about ‘Two Doors’ | Dream Hub Official Page