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> Seoul is within range of the DMZ, and North Korea has 80,000 pieces of artillery aimed directly at it. Why didn't South Korea start, decades ago, relocating

> Seoul is within range of the DMZ, and North Korea has 80,000 pieces of artillery aimed directly at it. Why didn't South Korea start, decades ago, relocating its capital to somewhere out of artillery fire, i.e. end all development in Seoul and build a new city in the south. It seems to be a bit thoughtless to build a major city where it is a hostage to the brutal and aggressive dictatorship next door.

fatbird 14y ago
They didn't build it after the Korean War, it's been there for 2,000 years. While they could relocate the government to Pusan, the millions living there would likely have stayed, resulting in the same situation.
- cabalamat 14y ago
  What was the population of Seoul just after the war ended? Would I be right in guessing it was a lot less than it is now, and that most buildings in modern Seoul post-date the war?
  - guard-of-terra 14y ago
    Seoul means very much for them. If I understand right, "Seoul" is a word for capital. They took traditions seriously and traditionally it's THE capital. Even North Korea considered Seoul the capital for decades, calling Pyongyang "the capital of revolution" or something like that. Also, it was a very poor and unstable country post-war and didn't feature much strategic thinking. And obviously USA wanted their military bases near the border, i.e. in Seoul.
brown9-2 14y ago
Would relocating the capital really change the strategic situation much? North Korea possesses missiles whose range could (supposedly) hit any other piece of ground in South Korea.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  It would change it a lot, but maybe not enough. As it stands now the combination of civilian population density and quantity of North Korea artillery means that millions of people would die in even a single hour of shelling. However, even if all of Seoul was evacuated it wouldn't necessarily make things so much better as North Korea has missiles with enough range even to hit Japan or the US, and potentially nuclear weapons to go with them. Potentially one could imagine banking on anti-missile systems to nullify that threat but that's a pretty big gamble.
InclinedPlane 14y ago
At what point was this a good idea or even remotely feasible? For most of the 20th century South Korea was comparatively poor and a developing nation. They've only reached a level of wealth comparable to the western world in the last few decades. Also, an attempt to move people out of the capital would have been a provocative act to North Korea, at any time. Because it would have been seen as an obvious prelude to an invasion.
kibwen 14y ago
A bit of a tangent here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C._in_the_American_Civil_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C._in_the_America... Despite being the nation's capital, Washington remained a small city of a few thousand residents, virtually deserted during the torrid summertime, until the outbreak of the Civil War. "Of all the detestable places Washington is first. Crowd, heat, bad quarters, bad fair [fare], bad smells, mosquitos, and a plague of flies transcending everything within my experience... Beelzebub surely reigns here, and Willard's Hotel is his temple." At the outset the U.S. Civil War, Washington D.C. wasn't just a stinking, festering, undefended podunk backwater; it was a stinking, festering, undefended podunk backwater bordered on the south by the most powerful bastion of Confederate sentiment and on the north by a state experiencing a crisis of North/South identity. So why didn't Lincoln pack up and move the capital to Philadelphia or New York? This question isn't rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious. Was it national pride? Would moving the capital have been viewed as an act of implicit defeat? Whatever the reason, perhaps the South Koreans felt the same.
- harlanlewis 14y ago
  This is an interesting question, and one that a few brief minutes searching the usual sources doesn't turn up an obvious answer (or even much discussion). Moving the capital doesn't appear to have been seriously considered at the time. It is easy to find lots of information on Washington DC's civil war defenses - some ~70 forts, 400 emplacements for field guns, and unmatched transportation/communication infrastructure. The resources devoted to protecting the capital instead of campaigning were a regular source of contention for Lincoln, his generals, and public opinion - many opportunities were missed by Army of the Potomac commanders who feared leaving DC vulnerable. On the other side, the Confederate capital was originally in Montgomery, Alabama, and moved to Richmond, Virginia when Virginia seceded following Fort Sumter. Like Washington, this put the capital remarkably close to the front lines, but the existing industry, infrastructure, political weight, and defensibility seemed to make the position worth the risk. Hoping someone with knowledge chimes in :).
  - oh_sigh 14y ago
    The world was bigger and slower back then. If southern troops were mobilized, there would be days or weeks of warning before they got to DC. By that time, the politicians could retreat, and replace themselves with union soldiers.
rsuttongee 14y ago
They actually have been trying to move the government functions to Sejong City(which is 120km south of Seoul), but the courts stopped it from happening: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18670195 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18670195 I don't follow Korean politics, so I don't know if the motivations were to escape NK artillery or some other reason, but it seems like organizing a massive move is just one of those things democracy is bad at.
mr_luc 14y ago
This is a question I've had as well -- but since I can't think of any examples of this happening in any country ever, despite the timelessness of the plight, my hunch has always been that it's essentially impossible for some reason that's not readily apparent. (My money's on the impossibility of mustering political will to do something so destructive that reeks so much of defeat and desperation). Maybe submit this to xkcd's 'what-if'?
KMag 14y ago
During the cold war, the same could be said of Washington D.C. Even now, a surprise SLBM salvo can turn DC into a smoldering crater before you can say "get the president to the bunker". It's prohibitively expensive to move a city, especially if the justification is "if we get really f-d, then we'll be a little less f-d". The U.S.'s defense against an attack on D.C. was the assumption of a rational enemy, nuclear hardened command and control bunkers very far from shore, nuclear hardened ICBM silos very far from shore, continuously airborne nuclear bombers, and very stealthy SSBNs. Really, South Korea's strongest defense is that an invasion by the North would instantly kill enough US troops to guarantee massive US retaliation against all military bases in NK, and would instantly kill enough civilians that China wouldn't retaliate as long as no US troops crossed the DMZ. Hopefully this is a big enough threat that a significant number of high-level and mid-level military leaders would stage a coup d'etat rather than follow orders to invade SK. Edit: one would hope that the U.S. and China already have negotiated how much retaliation China will tolerate in response to various acts of war by NK. One would also hope that these details have been leaked to NK.

fatbird 14y ago

They didn't build it after the Korean War, it's been there for 2,000 years. While they could relocate the government to Pusan, the millions living there would likely have stayed, resulting in the same situation.

cabalamat 14y ago
What was the population of Seoul just after the war ended? Would I be right in guessing it was a lot less than it is now, and that most buildings in modern Seoul post-date the war?
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  Seoul means very much for them. If I understand right, "Seoul" is a word for capital. They took traditions seriously and traditionally it's THE capital. Even North Korea considered Seoul the capital for decades, calling Pyongyang "the capital of revolution" or something like that. Also, it was a very poor and unstable country post-war and didn't feature much strategic thinking. And obviously USA wanted their military bases near the border, i.e. in Seoul.

brown9-2 14y ago

Would relocating the capital really change the strategic situation much? North Korea possesses missiles whose range could (supposedly) hit any other piece of ground in South Korea.

InclinedPlane 14y ago
It would change it a lot, but maybe not enough. As it stands now the combination of civilian population density and quantity of North Korea artillery means that millions of people would die in even a single hour of shelling. However, even if all of Seoul was evacuated it wouldn't necessarily make things so much better as North Korea has missiles with enough range even to hit Japan or the US, and potentially nuclear weapons to go with them. Potentially one could imagine banking on anti-missile systems to nullify that threat but that's a pretty big gamble.

InclinedPlane 14y ago

At what point was this a good idea or even remotely feasible? For most of the 20th century South Korea was comparatively poor and a developing nation. They've only reached a level of wealth comparable to the western world in the last few decades. Also, an attempt to move people out of the capital would have been a provocative act to North Korea, at any time. Because it would have been seen as an obvious prelude to an invasion.

kibwen 14y ago

A bit of a tangent here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C._in_the_American_Civil_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C._in_the_America... Despite being the nation's capital, Washington remained a small city of a few thousand residents, virtually deserted during the torrid summertime, until the outbreak of the Civil War. "Of all the detestable places Washington is first. Crowd, heat, bad quarters, bad fair [fare], bad smells, mosquitos, and a plague of flies transcending everything within my experience... Beelzebub surely reigns here, and Willard's Hotel is his temple." At the outset the U.S. Civil War, Washington D.C. wasn't just a stinking, festering, undefended podunk backwater; it was a stinking, festering, undefended podunk backwater bordered on the south by the most powerful bastion of Confederate sentiment and on the north by a state experiencing a crisis of North/South identity. So why didn't Lincoln pack up and move the capital to Philadelphia or New York? This question isn't rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious. Was it national pride? Would moving the capital have been viewed as an act of implicit defeat? Whatever the reason, perhaps the South Koreans felt the same.

harlanlewis 14y ago
This is an interesting question, and one that a few brief minutes searching the usual sources doesn't turn up an obvious answer (or even much discussion). Moving the capital doesn't appear to have been seriously considered at the time. It is easy to find lots of information on Washington DC's civil war defenses - some ~70 forts, 400 emplacements for field guns, and unmatched transportation/communication infrastructure. The resources devoted to protecting the capital instead of campaigning were a regular source of contention for Lincoln, his generals, and public opinion - many opportunities were missed by Army of the Potomac commanders who feared leaving DC vulnerable. On the other side, the Confederate capital was originally in Montgomery, Alabama, and moved to Richmond, Virginia when Virginia seceded following Fort Sumter. Like Washington, this put the capital remarkably close to the front lines, but the existing industry, infrastructure, political weight, and defensibility seemed to make the position worth the risk. Hoping someone with knowledge chimes in :).
- oh_sigh 14y ago
  The world was bigger and slower back then. If southern troops were mobilized, there would be days or weeks of warning before they got to DC. By that time, the politicians could retreat, and replace themselves with union soldiers.

rsuttongee 14y ago

They actually have been trying to move the government functions to Sejong City(which is 120km south of Seoul), but the courts stopped it from happening: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18670195 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18670195 I don't follow Korean politics, so I don't know if the motivations were to escape NK artillery or some other reason, but it seems like organizing a massive move is just one of those things democracy is bad at.

mr_luc 14y ago

This is a question I've had as well -- but since I can't think of any examples of this happening in any country ever, despite the timelessness of the plight, my hunch has always been that it's essentially impossible for some reason that's not readily apparent. (My money's on the impossibility of mustering political will to do something so destructive that reeks so much of defeat and desperation). Maybe submit this to xkcd's 'what-if'?

KMag 14y ago

During the cold war, the same could be said of Washington D.C. Even now, a surprise SLBM salvo can turn DC into a smoldering crater before you can say "get the president to the bunker". It's prohibitively expensive to move a city, especially if the justification is "if we get really f-d, then we'll be a little less f-d". The U.S.'s defense against an attack on D.C. was the assumption of a rational enemy, nuclear hardened command and control bunkers very far from shore, nuclear hardened ICBM silos very far from shore, continuously airborne nuclear bombers, and very stealthy SSBNs. Really, South Korea's strongest defense is that an invasion by the North would instantly kill enough US troops to guarantee massive US retaliation against all military bases in NK, and would instantly kill enough civilians that China wouldn't retaliate as long as no US troops crossed the DMZ. Hopefully this is a big enough threat that a significant number of high-level and mid-level military leaders would stage a coup d'etat rather than follow orders to invade SK. Edit: one would hope that the U.S. and China already have negotiated how much retaliation China will tolerate in response to various acts of war by NK. One would also hope that these details have been leaked to NK.