Yoido: Master Plans and Urban Dream
Se-Mi Oh, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Abstract: This presentation looks into competing processes surrounding the development of Yoido in the late 1960s and 1970s. It pays particular attention to the “master plans” proposed by Kim Sugun and Kim Seok Chul in the Development of Yoido and the Shores of the Han River in 1969. In putting forward a solution for urban expansion and population growth, these planners envisioned Yoido as an urban core that would create a new spatio-temporal potential for the city and change its socio-economic structural basis. Therefore, this presentation will analyze the place of Yoido in the Seoul Master Plan and larger discourses on urban planning during this time. By examining three stages of planning and construction, the presentation will address: 1) how the idea of new urbanity in the linear model incorporated contemporary ideas of urban planning and problems 2) how the construction of ring bunds around the island shows the contradiction between flood control and ecological destruction, and 3) what the changes made in the actual implementation of the plan says about the ways in which urbanization collided and collaborated with anti-communism of the Park Chung Hee regime.
