[Editorial] Make Nanjido's Golf Course a 'Family Ecology Park'

There never should have been a golf course built at Nanjido, which is coming back to life as a "green ecology park." The Seoul Olympic Sports Promotion Foundation and Seoul's city government, ignoring public opinion, built a golf course there and the result was a long, boring legal battle over who got to run the place. Now it has turned into a strange fight indeed, with the foundation applying pressure on the city by allowing people to enter free of charge and the city fighting back by levying compensation money for the illegal use of the property.

The deal in 2001 was that the foundation would build a nine hole golf course at Nanjido's 59,000 pyeong Noeul Park, and in exchange the city would let the foundation run the facility for 20 years. The two sides had looked quite happy with each other ahead of the facility's opening, but then problems started cropping up. The city demanded that the foundation register it as a non-profit "public sports facility" instead of as a for-profit facility. Being so registered would require the foundation to be supervised and audited by the city government, so the foundation went to court.

The problem is not a question of which side is in the right. What is important here is that both thoroughly ignored the fact that it is the citizens of Seoul who are the real owners of Noeul Park. Both completely ignored the will of the citizens when the agreed on the principles of constructing and operating the golf course, and they continue to do so while they're in the midst of their current mud fight.

Nanjido got its name because of the fragrant scents of orchids (nancho) and gromwell (<jicho) you find there, but it became a wasteland when it got covered with massive amounts of garbage Seoul vomited up and the only reason an ecosystem has come back to life there is because of the nature's great ability to restore itself. It is compared to Cheonggyecheon, which took hundreds of billions of Won to bring back to life.

It is a blasphemy against nature to use that land as a golf course, being as anti-ecological as those are. It is also a sin against the many citizens of Seoul who would visit if it were a park, instead of having it used by 240 golfers a day.

The Hankyoreh, 6 October 2005.

[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]