Park Jin-young, JYP Entertainment's chief producer. (Yonhap)
Park Jin-young, JYP Entertainment's chief producer. (Yonhap)

JYP Entertainment's plan to build a new headquarters in Godeok-dong, Gangdong-gu, Seoul, has in effect fallen through, sources say.

Yoo Hyun-joon is a professor at Hongik University's College of Architecture and Urban Design who designed JYP's new headquarters. He said Thursday via TenAsia that JYP had informed him of its decision to withdraw from the project. "It has been decided to scrap the plan entirely," he said.

JYP had initially planned to build a new headquarters with a total floor area of 69,259 square meters, spanning five below-ground floors and 17 above-ground floors, in Godeok Business Valley. The company acquired the site in 2023. Last year, it obtained a construction permit after completing a traffic impact assessment and a joint review by the architecture and landscape committee. It aimed to break ground in the second half of the year.

Warning signs emerged after the Seoul Housing & Communities Corporation and the Gangdong-gu office changed the designation of a 13,261-square-meter park site in the Godeok Gangil district. The site sits just 20 meters from the planned new headquarters. It was redesignated as a self-sufficiency support facility site, and pre-sales began. The change allows a building of up to 18 to 19 stories to be constructed on that park site.

JYP's new headquarters was designed as a ring-shaped building surrounding a central courtyard, intended to blend with the surrounding landscape while also protecting the privacy of building users, including celebrities. Concerns arose that a high-rise built just 20 meters away could compromise that privacy protection.

According to Yoo, JYP learned of the zoning change on the adjacent site and proposed several compromise plans to the Seoul Housing & Communities Corporation to keep the project alive. The corporation accepted none of them. The proposals included applying the same floor area ratio while capping the building's height at six stories or below. Another option involved repositioning the park so the new building would be set farther from JYP's headquarters.

On this, JYP declined to elaborate, saying only that it was "discussing the matter from various angles."


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