ABSTRACT
Following the devastation wrought by the Korean War in the early 1950s, the city of Seoul became a magnet for people, particularly from rural areas, searching for work and for a better life. It is now an important city in the global urban hierarchy – a ‘world city’ – with 10 million inhabitants. However, excessive concentration of population in Seoul and in the extended Seoul Metropolitan Region (hereafter SMR) has created many problems, including housing shortages, inflated land prices and traffic congestion. Disparities between the capital region and other parts of South Korea have grown over time, despite periodic attempts by government to direct development away from Seoul.
