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Yes, but who owns it? Who is investing the capital in the infrastructure? Who got to tell those fisherman "yeah, so you're never going to be able to fish here a
by omegaworks 12y ago
Yes, but who owns it? Who is investing the capital in the infrastructure? Who got to tell those fisherman "yeah, so you're never going to be able to fish here again, here is some farmland." Is the government building everything? Where does the rent money go?
- bane 12y agoAccording to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songdo_International_Business_District https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songdo_International_Business_... Gale International holds 61%, Posco 30% with Morgan Stanley Real Estate holding the final 9%. Infrastructure, labor and funding are being provided by the city of Incheon. I don't know who owned the original area. But I imagine as these things go, regardless of who owned the tidal flat property Songdo is being built on (and my guess is that the answer was "nobody" since it would be under water most of the day), the government would end up owning it as an intermediary using South Korea's relatively strong eminent domain laws. There's a long history in South Korea of displacing people out of traditional areas in the name of development. Projects like Sejong City and the new Pyeongtaek development (where the U.S. military is relocating to) are all large eminent domain land grabs in fairly rural areas. The tradeoff is usually a guaranteed apartment or some subsidy on a new apartment in one of the new developments. It's tough to do development on a large scale in a very small country with even more limited usable land. Land reform in South Korea is one of the oldest government issues dating back thousands of years.