ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the eras of Seoul's progress to a perceived maturity in green and sustainable issues. These are: the developmental era, the initial phase of Korea's remarkable economic growth and the establishment of its Green Belts between the late 1950s to the mid-1990s; then, a period of correction, a phase covering the late 1990s to around 2010, an era dominated by fixing, repurposing or demolishing failing infrastructure from the developmental era as well as adjusting to the impact on budgets of global or regional financial crises. The chapter deals with sustainability, both economic and environmental, with the nation's and Seoul's push to move up the world rankings through tourism, Free Trade agreements and other soft power measures. One of the cornerstones of Seoul Metropolitan Government policy, at least since full democratization, had always been for an environment for 'happy citizens', relatively easy to attain during the previous decades of almost uninterrupted economic growth.
