Cho Kuk, head of the Rebuilding Korea Party's innovation policy research institute [Yonhap]
Cho Kuk, head of the Rebuilding Korea Party's innovation policy research institute [Yonhap]

Cho Kuk, head of the Rebuilding Korea Party's innovation policy research institute, said Thursday that Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon and the People Power Party should stop playing "political games" over Yongsan Park.

Writing on his Facebook page, Cho said the "wasteful politics of turning public assets that future generations should enjoy into tools of political conflict must stop immediately."

He said Oh and the PPP were mounting a "political offensive" by framing the Yongsan Park debate as a binary choice between a park and development. Cho said Seoul City had raised no objections to the Special Act on Yongsan Park Development when the National Assembly's Land and Infrastructure Committee reviewed it in April, making Oh's opposition "a belated political attack."

"The minutes of that review meeting show that when the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's section chief asked Seoul City for its opinion on the bill, the city said it had no objections," Cho said. "They had no objections then, and now they are suddenly up in arms opposing it."

He also pointed to Oh's stance during discussions over lifting greenbelt restrictions — including the Seoripul area — on Nov. 5, 2024, when the mayor called housing supply expansion an "unavoidable choice" and actively backed the government's policy. "The same person who called the low birth rate and housing problem an 'existential challenge' and pushed to lift greenbelt restrictions has now done a complete about-face, crying foul about damage the moment someone proposes discussing how to use Yongsan Park to address the youth housing crisis," Cho said.

Cho also brought up Oh's resignation from the mayoral post over the outcome of a residents' referendum on free school meals. "The generation that was hurt by that free-meals fight has grown up and is now today's youth," he said. "In the past, he played politics with children's lunches; now he is playing politics with young people's homes. This is irresponsible and dangerous demagoguery."

Cho said the issue was not a matter of choosing between preserving a park and building housing. "We need to discuss how to give citizens better green space while at the same time providing better housing for young people and future generations," he said.

He described Yongsan Park as "land belonging to future generations that can be both a premier public housing complex for young people and a premier green space for citizens," and called for open public deliberation rather than "political demagoguery that prematurely forecloses possibilities."

Cho urged the National Assembly, the government and Seoul City to "take a responsible posture and enter into serious discussions so that future generations can directly decide what kind of space will hold their lives."


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