One morning last week, I took a bus trip to Sejong City to see for myself what was going on in the new administrative town out of curiosity as a concerned taxpayer and semi-active journalist.

Peeping into the office buildings of the Sixth Bloc, the earliest completed part in the administrative complex that now houses four ministries and the Prime Minister’s Office, I had one lingering question: Would there be any room in the heads of those officials inside to think of good public service other than the discomfort they experience day after day? I felt sorry for them having just joined them in the 150-kilometer journey from Seoul. Most of them make it in chartered buses and KTX trains.

While walking through the Dasom, Doum, Galmae and Hannuri streets, which were completely devoid of any restaurants, cafs or convenience stores, I came across fewer than 10 pedestrians in two hours. At the lakeside park on the eastern fringe of the complex, I was glad to see a young couple, probably residents in one of the new apartments in the “Multifunctional Administrative City (MAC)” comprising the office zone and the residential bloc.

Numerous tower cranes rise in the second- and third-phase construction sites of the administrative complex. Steel frames of low-rise (five to six stories) structures are being affixed with concrete slabs and glass and metal panels. Dump trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles carrying various building materials dominate the traffic.

Korea’s first-class construction ingenuity is being utilized to create a wonderland with all kinds of high-tech facilities in futuristic designs. But in my humble opinion, three to four years would still not be enough to stabilize Sejong City’s functions. And the serious question is whether the administrative city will ever be able to fulfill its mission properly in such a split structure of government operation.

Critics call Sejong City an illegitimate child of politics. It has topped the national political agenda for over a decade as politicians manipulated the issue at will, appealing to regional sentiments whenever necessary. Initially contrived as an election stratagem, the basic concept changed from an alternate capital to a detached administrative town. But the root objective was to provide geographical security for the seat of government facing North Korean threats.

It was in the early 1970s when Seoul’s residents grew over 6 million that President Park Chung-hee’s government began serious studies to curb population concentration in the capital city, mainly out of security concerns considering its location within the reach of North Korea’s surface missiles and long-range artillery. Relocation of central administrative functions was a natural option.

Daejeon in the very center of the territory emerged as a good choice. First, the headquarters of the three armed services moved to Gyeryongdae complex near the city between the late 1980s and early 1990s. Several second-tier administration agencies were relocated to Daejeon from 1997. And then politics grabbed the agenda aiming at votes in the Chungcheong provinces.

In the final stage of 2002 election, Roh Moo-hyun added the item of a new administrative capital in Chungcheong to his campaign pledges. After winning by a 3 percent margin, he publicly admitted that the last-minute campaign item earned him “a handsome profit.” He justified it with his main political philosophy of regional balance and harmony.

But, Roh’s administrative capital plan was nullified in a Constitutional Court ruling, which cited an “unwritten constitution” that Seoul should remain as the eternal capital city of Korea. I still believe that this was a most political judgment by the top court to counterbalance its earlier reversal of the National Assembly’s impeachment of President Roh for his alleged meddling in parliamentary elections.

I could not understand how the majority of our constitutional justices so conveniently ignored the many instances of world nations having new capitals away from their historical center of economic, political and cultural lives. Whatever their logic concerning Koreans’ inseparable attachment to their capital city of more than six centuries, the justices might have simply been reluctant to raise the hand of Roh Moo-hyun for the second time in a row after the crucial impeachment ruling.

Roh then introduced the “multifunctional administrative city” to replace the foiled administrative capital. This MAC weathered another political storm when President Lee Myung-bak, fearing inefficiency, tried to alter it to an industrial, science and education hub linked to the R&D complexes in the nearby Daejeon area. His intraparty rival Park Geun-hye and her followers joined the opposition group to reject the scheme in an Assembly vote.

The government has already spent 22 trillion won ($20 billion) on the MAC and several more trillion won will be needed until some 10,000 government officials in nine (out of a total 17) ministries and more than 30 other central government offices will eventually work in the Sejong complex.

Two business trips to Seoul per week on average are said to be required of these officials regardless of rank or position. The waste of time, energy and money is enormous. Incalculable amounts of creative ideas and initiatives will be lost due to personal discomfort and environmental inconveniences. No country in the world would allow this kind of absurdity and no public administration expert can even imagine it. Then where is the solution?

President Park Geun-hye who is partly responsible for the problems today should explore the answer. A sincere proposal here is that she start a study to reunite the government from physical division. After the second- and third-phase projects have been completed, fourth and fifth phases should follow to bring the rest of central administration offices to the government complex. Then, under a new master plan, the National Assembly and the Blue House should come. People will not miss it too much if the legislature moves from Seoul’s Yeouido to the plains of Chungcheong. Only the judiciary may be left in Seoul.

Parties need to make a dramatic compromise for the cause of balanced regional development and safeguarding the government in military confrontation with the North. It will again cost a lot of tax money, but a huge amount of national energy will be saved from being wasted in administrative malfunction. President Park is reminded of the recent report that North Korea has increased the range of its multiple rocket launchers so that they can hit targets way south of Seoul, something her father had been grossly concerned about in the 1970s.

By Kim Myong-sik

Kim Myong-sik, a former Korea Herald editorial writer, has once headed the government’s overseas culture and information service. ― Ed.