Six urban complex sites in Seoul to supply 7,700 units

Ground-breaking set to begin from 2027

The headquarters of Korea Land and Housing Corporation [Newsis]
The headquarters of Korea Land and Housing Corporation [Newsis]

The Banghak Station complex — the fastest-moving site among Korea Land and Housing Corporation's urban complex projects — began its first demolition work Monday, five years after being designated as a candidate site.

Korea Land and Housing Corporation, known as LH, said "tangible results are emerging five years after the urban public housing complex project was launched in earnest to expand housing supply in city centers."

The urban complex project is a major urban redevelopment initiative in which public entities such as LH directly carry out development in aging city-center areas where private redevelopment is difficult. The program improves project viability through floor-area-ratio incentives and streamlines complex permitting procedures to deliver new housing quickly and reliably. Because LH takes direct responsibility, the program's key advantages over private redevelopment are expertise, transparency and speed.

The two fastest-moving sites — Banghak Station and the eastern Ssangmun Station district — were launched in 2021, and priority pre-sales for existing residents were completed last year. The Banghak Station complex in Seoul became the first in the city to begin demolition Monday, breaking ground five years after the candidate site was announced.

That timeline is more than eight years faster than the average 14 years and six months it takes private reconstruction and redevelopment projects in Seoul to move from site selection to ground-breaking.

"Behind this success were LH's field-focused, hands-on administration, active cooperation from residents, and support from government agencies," an LH official said. "LH operated on-site support centers where staff personally collected consent forms even on weekends and after hours, and addressed residents' difficulties quickly through relocation support centers."

According to LH, six urban complex sites in Seoul are now on track to deliver a combined 7,755 units of city-center housing. The Banghak Station and eastern Ssangmun Station sites have completed the compensation process and will proceed with resident relocation and demolition simultaneously before the end of this year, with ground-breaking scheduled for the first half of 2027.

For the remaining four sites, compensation contracts are set to begin in October for the Yeonsinnae Station and western Ssangmun Station zones, and in November for the Singil Zone 2 and Jeungsan Zone 4 areas. LH said it aims to break ground on all four sites in 2028 and plans to accelerate the pace of work.

After the first ground-breaking at Banghak Station next year, LH plans to deploy a dedicated workforce of 244 staff to its metropolitan redevelopment project division — the LH Metropolitan Redevelopment Special Headquarters — to ensure a steady volume of urban housing construction starts each year, with further support personnel to be added on an ongoing basis.

The staffing plan follows LH's "efficient concentrated deployment plan," which draws on experienced personnel from headquarters and non-metropolitan offices, new hires recruited in the first half of this year, and specialist and experienced contract workers to significantly strengthen the human capacity of the redevelopment operation.

[Provided by LH]
[Provided by LH]

Through this plan, LH intends to concentrate staff on key bottleneck stages — permitting, compensation, relocation and demolition — to eliminate delays, accelerate compensation at the four ongoing urban complex sites, and move swiftly into the ground-breaking process at Banghak Station and the eastern Ssangmun Station site in 2027.

LH President Lee Seong-hun said Monday that "with Seoul's urban complex projects set to break ground one after another from the first half of next year, we expect the effects of city-center housing supply to be felt directly by the public." He added that LH would "closely monitor conditions at each site, starting with the Banghak Station district, and advance the phased schedule as much as possible."

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced Monday that it plans to supply about 1.19 million units of public housing nationwide by 2030. Some 190,000 units of a newly introduced universal public rental housing type will be allocated first to third-generation new town project zones, and about 240,000 units of public pre-sale housing are planned for the greater Seoul metropolitan area.


hss@heraldcorp.com