Special progress meeting held Tuesday to rally partners; 14 of 25 tracked project sites, covering about 15,000 units, already under construction; mayor pledges to make project status public and personally clear obstacles

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon speaks at a joint cooperation signing ceremony and special progress meeting for 11 redevelopment and reconstruction projects scheduled to break ground in the second half of 2026, held Tuesday at Seoul City Hall. [Yonhap]
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon speaks at a joint cooperation signing ceremony and special progress meeting for 11 redevelopment and reconstruction projects scheduled to break ground in the second half of 2026, held Tuesday at Seoul City Hall. [Yonhap]

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon expressed confidence in the city's housing supply push Tuesday, pledging to do everything possible to break ground on 30,000 units by the end of the year and promising to make the progress of redevelopment and reconstruction projects publicly available to residents.

Oh wrote on his SNS account Tuesday that he had convened a special progress meeting that morning on redevelopment and reconstruction projects, gathering district offices, housing association representatives and contractors to reaffirm their commitment to second-half ground-breakings. "With the key players in housing supply all in one place, I urged everyone to pour every last bit of energy into the remaining months so we can absolutely hit this year's ground-breaking target of 30,000 units," he wrote.

He added that more than half of the 25 project sites the city had been closely managing — 14 sites covering about 15,000 units — had already broken ground. "We are mounting an all-out effort to ensure the remaining volume also breaks ground before the year is out," he said.

Oh said housing supply cannot be achieved overnight simply by announcing numbers. He said he had watched with anguish as 389 redevelopment zones were dissolved between 2012 and 2020, wiping out the supply base for 430,000 units. He called it "a truly devastating sight that set back the history of housing supply in South Korea."

Oh said the city had run without pause for the past five years to rebuild that collapsed supply base, sharply expanding the designation of new redevelopment zones, removing regulations and obstacles through its fast-track integrated planning process, and cutting every possible step in the timeline. "As a result, reconstruction and redevelopment projects covering 530,000 units are now under way across 496 zones throughout Seoul," he said.

He said city civil servants had worked around the clock to restore the supply base, and that effort now had to translate into tangible results that residents could feel. "I will not let up until zone designations lead to ground-breakings and, ultimately, to completed homes that residents can move into," he said.

"Every single day matters now. I will personally track the progress of each project site and remove whatever is blocking ground-breaking," Oh said, adding that the city would make its housing supply progress fully transparent to the public.

He said a status board tracking redevelopment and reconstruction progress and ground-breaking figures had been installed in his office since June, and that he reviews supply conditions daily. He promised to make that information available to the public through the city's "Jeongbi Saeopjeongbo Mongtang" portal, a one-stop platform for redevelopment and reconstruction project information.

Oh closed by writing that he would "sprint even harder" to ensure the 30,000-unit ground-breaking target is met by Christmas. "I will answer the trust of residents not with words, but with results they can see," he said.


ikson@heraldcorp.com